


someday; love of mine

by letterstothemoon



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: (kind of), Angst, Childhood Friends to Lovers, Everything is Beautiful and Everything Hurts, Friends to Lovers, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mentioned Suicide Attempt, Novelist Mark & Pianist Donghyuck, Pining, References to Depression, Slow Burn, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-02
Updated: 2021-02-23
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:41:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 51,958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28456995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/letterstothemoon/pseuds/letterstothemoon
Summary: On the coldest day of the year, Mark opens his door and finds himself face-to-face with the one person he thought he’d never see again.“I’m home,” says Donghyuck, and Mark steps aside wordlessly to let him in.(They don’t talk about the fact that Donghyuck is a pianist with beautiful hands that don’t work quite right anymore.)
Relationships: Lee Donghyuck | Haechan/Mark Lee
Comments: 155
Kudos: 326
Collections: Markhyuck Week 2021





	1. in equal measures

**Author's Note:**

> Title from: [I Will Follow You Into The Dark](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDHY1D0tKRA&ab_channel=Truhffles)  
> Songs referenced: [Pathétique](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lq4G3KRAuXc&ab_channel=MaZr); [Clair de Lune](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvFH_6DNRCY&ab_channel=CHANNEL3YOUTUBE)  
> Poem quoted: [Nothing Gold Can Stay](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/148652/nothing-gold-can-stay-5c095cc5ab679)

Somewhere in the middle of December, Mark is hunched over his computer, hands hovering over the keys of his laptop. The Word document in front of him is painfully blank, his cursor blinking at him tauntingly, and the glare of the screen is too bright. The tips of his fingers feel stiff with cold.

His apartment is freezing (he never did get around to fixing that wonky heater), and the coffee beside him has long since gone stale. But that’s negligible, especially when he’s faced with the daunting view of the empty page. He’s supposed to be starting on the first draft of a novel that’s theoretically going to be published by this time next year, but there are no words. They come out strange and lopsided, tired and unimaginative. There isn’t even a _plot_. 

He’s somewhere in the middle of Not Writing when the doorbell rings, and he blinks at the clock. It’s eleven at night, and it might be too late for him to be receiving any visitors. Mark isn’t sure who it could possibly be—because as of right now the only person outside of his editor and agent he still talks to is… well, nobody. Mark isn’t exactly the proud owner of a sparkling social life. Sue him.

Pushing his glasses further up the bridge of his nose, Mark sighs and resigns himself to yet another unproductive evening, knowing that no matter how much he wills it so, a finished novel isn’t going to magically come into existence just because he stared at his laptop without blinking for twenty minutes.

When the door opens under his numb hands, he comes face to face with the one person he thought he’d never see again. Mark’s left breathless; air punched out of his lungs.

Standing behind the door is Lee Donghyuck.

Donghyuck, Donghyuck, _Donghyuck._

Donghyuck, who is smiling and slim and gorgeous and _supposed to be in America._

Arguably, there’s nothing about Donghyuck that should surprise Mark. He still keeps up with the man; watches his performances on TV when he can, streams them on his laptop when he misses the lives—although to be fair, it’s not like piano recitals are often streamed live—but Mark really does try his best. He knows what Donghyuck has been up to, (although he hadn’t known about him coming back), but the thing is… he’d thought that when Donghyuck had left all those years ago after their graduation, that he had intended to never return.

It had certainly seemed that way, back when they were eighteen and nineteen and the world was still bright and beautiful and full of endless opportunities—when Donghyuck had thrown pebbles at Mark’s window in the middle of the night until he had cracked the window open to hiss at him to shut the fuck up, and Donghyuck had only grinned and breathlessly told him that he’d _made it_ , that he was going to _America_ , that he was going to become the best concert pianist the world had ever seen. Nineteen years old and helplessly in love, Mark had thought but had been too scared to say: _but I already think you’re the best, isn’t that enough?_ Because even then, young and stupid and oh-so-naïve, Mark had known better. It hadn’t been enough, not for Donghyuck.

And maybe it was inevitable, the way they grew apart, the way daily phone calls dwindled to weekly texts and then monthly hellos—gone unanswered—and then nothing at all. Losing his best friend hurt in a quiet, subtle way, the gradual descent into oblivion marked only by the sensation of a hand gripping at the pulsing ache behind his ribs.

Perhaps it was simply just another consequence of growing up, in the same way that excitement dulled, and the world shrank, pinprick small, until it was composed of himself and that alone. A question of ego, of a self-imposed loneliness, of facing the monsters beneath his bed, the skeletons in his closet. Donghyuck and Mark were supposed to be the exception, the rare success story of childhood friends who had stuck it through together into adulthood, and when Donghyuck had _left_ , Mark had had no doubts about their ability to maintain some sort of arbitrary ‘best friend’ status. But life rarely caters to the whims of a boy in love, and so their friendship had fizzled out naturally, without fanfare.

Their growing apart had happened so slowly, so gradually, that by the time Mark realized things had been steadily slipping from between his fingers, shifting grains of sand, something had already broken irreparably. In hindsight, maybe neither of them had been ready to let each other go, or maybe the opposite was true, too. That they’d both had no choice but to surrender. Sometimes Mark thought about Donghyuck late at night, when his eyes refused to close, and he would wonder: _why didn’t he fight for us?_ And the inevitable answer would always be _because I didn’t, either_. And that was just the way things were. Was regret appropriate for such a conscious choice, for the cost of growing up?

Mark’s fingers are so cold, and he feels stiff with a fraught sort of fragility that he hasn’t experienced since the eve of their graduation, when Donghyuck had gifted him a shitty fountain pen and told him to follow his dreams with a speech that sounded like he’d lifted it straight off a Hallmark card. Donghyuck’s always been larger than life, big words and bigger dreams ensconced within a pretty shell and an obnoxious attitude, and Mark has never once been able to look away.

Even now, there’s something _else_ about Donghyuck that you can’t see through a screen. Maybe it’s the gentle way his hair falls over his forehead, sweeps across his brow. His skin, golden tan, a little acne red smattered across his cheeks and forehead. His mouth stretched into that unassuming smile. Far too much teeth. His long limbs, his shirt and coat drawn down his shoulder by his duffel. His collarbones, his Adam’s apple. Mark’s mouth is dry.

“I’m home,” Donghyuck says, voice so soft it’s nearly inaudible. Mark’s knees go temporarily weak, needing to grip the door handle with a desperation that makes his knuckles go pale. He steps back, to the side. Helpless, defeated. Like he’s just waiting for Donghyuck to step right back in, into his apartment, into his life, no questions asked.

“No,” Donghyuck shakes his head instead, and he looks to the side and it’s almost as if he doesn’t know how to meet Mark’s eyes. “I, uh. I won’t bother you… I just. I’m going to stay with my parents, probably. I…” he swallows, and Mark stares at his pursed lips, his bobbing throat. “I just wanted to say hi.” Donghyuck’s voice is small.

There’s something different about Donghyuck, Mark thinks, as he rests a hip against the doorframe, studying his friend. (Friend. _Friend_. Is that what he is?) His smile is strained, his lips stretched painfully tight. He thinks about saying something about it, thinks about yelling, and maybe crying, although what he’s feeling now isn’t anything like sadness. He thinks about reaching forward to grab Donghyuck by the shoulders to demand answers, to beg for some twisted version of a justification.

Instead, what comes out of his mouth is a deliberately casual, “What’re you talking about, man?” Somehow it isn’t hard to muster up a grin. “You’re gonna stay right here, with me.”

And then Donghyuck’s entire body seems to go slack with relief and his smile gets infinitely brighter—it’s blinding, and it hurts like looking directly at the sun. He hikes his duffel bag higher up his shoulder. “Alright!” He says, chirpily, because _of course_ this was what he was waiting for.

Mark doesn’t know why he’d offered, only that he’s sure that it’s what Donghyuck had been hoping for. He lives in an apartment that’s only got one bedroom, and the couch is objectively terrible, so maybe Mark’s just made the worst mistake of his life and invited Donghyuck into his bed. Let it be known that Mark has never been known for his sound decision-making skills.

It seems as though Donghyuck’s only got one bag, and his own fingers are red and chapped with cold. He shivers as he sets his duffel down on the couch, only briefly eyeing Mark’s open laptop, his forgotten mug.

“God, it’s cold in here,” Donghyuck rubs his hands together, and his voice sounds exactly like Mark remembers it, a little high-pitched and brittle, a delicate thing made of glass.

“Uh, yeah,” Mark stutters, all of a sudden feeling distinctly unmoored. “Heater’s broken.”

Donghyuck turns to him and is silent. In the past, Mark thinks that maybe Donghyuck would have whined, would have called Mark a horrible cheapskate for not fixing his heater immediately, before insisting Mark go out to buy him tteokbokki as some form of payment for his troubles. Donghyuck’s never made that much sense, a creature subject to countless impulses, but perhaps Mark has always been cursed with a blind willingness to concede to said fancies.

Now, though, Donghyuck looks at him with a considering gaze, and his eyes are the same, too, a little downturned and almost morose, but heartbreakingly pretty all the same. “That’s not good,” he says, eventually, and cracks a smile.

“Yeah,” says Mark dumbly. He still isn’t quite sure Donghyuck’s _real_.

Donghyuck spins around, taking in the look of Mark’s admittedly sad apartment. It’s the apartment Mark moved into in his junior year of university, a cheap little place that had been all he’d been able to afford at the time. Even know, having published two books, it’s not as though Mark is rolling in dough, either. He’d been the caricature of a starving artist for a good several years, from university up until maybe two years ago, when he’d been twenty-three.

Then he’d met Seo Johnny, his agent, and Kim Doyoung, his editor, and cut himself an okay deal writing flowery romance novels. It’s not exactly the future he’d envisioned for himself at the tender age of eleven when he’d announced to the entirety of his fifth-grade class that he wanted to write novels for a living, although he can’t exactly complain. He doesn’t mind writing romance, even though he hasn’t come across any groundbreaking loves in his life—not unless you count Lee Donghyuck, which Mark deliberately does not.

They certainly hadn’t dated, but Mark is fairly convinced that Donghyuck had known—at least in some capacity—that Mark had been in love with him, despite never having explicitly said the words. Mark’s never been well-versed in the art of subtlety, never thought to hide his feelings from Donghyuck. It’s not as though he expected anything to come of it; he’d been in love, not _stupid_. Donghyuck was never his to keep.

“Your decorating skills are dismal as always, Lee Minhyung,” Donghyuck says teasingly, successfully jolting Mark out of his somewhat disheartening trip down memory lane.

“Guess it’s good that you’re here, then,” Mark snorts, and his traitorous heart skips a beat at Donghyuck’s responding beam.

“I guess it is,” Donghyuck says, and he looks pretty and pleased under the faint yellow glow of the overhead lights.

Later, after he’s given Donghyuck a tour and they’re together in the bedroom, Mark doesn’t think to ask why Donghyuck’s back in town, only how long he’s planning on staying.

Donghyuck pauses, in the middle of unpacking the meagre contents of his duffel, looking strangely at home at the foot of Mark’s bed. He’s been stripped of his expensive-looking pea coat, left in a soft cream-colored sweater that makes him look like something out of a dream. “I’m not sure,” he says lightly, and then looks down to fold a pair of jeans. “I haven’t quite thought about it.”

It’s a stilted, avoidant answer, and Mark knows better than to push.

He awkwardly shows Donghyuck where he can put his clothes, and Donghyuck teases him for having never grown out of the fashion sense of a broke college student, which is an accusation Mark can’t even defend himself against, because it’s true.

Donghyuck fits back into his life like he’d never left at all, easygoing and making up for all the awkward silences Mark leaves in their wake.

For a writer, Mark’s never been all that eloquent. Words get stuck in his throat, come out wonky and stuttering. Between the two of them, it’s always been Donghyuck who spoke well, who said terrible things and made them sound beautiful. Donghyuck’s always been better than Mark in every conceivable way. Even now, Donghyuck chatters away easily, joking about how they’ll have no choice but to huddle for warmth.

Mark watches him, in some sort of daze. It’s still hard to conceive of the Donghyuck before him as something tangible. The Donghyuck of six years ago is shifting smoke, the mirage of a memory. Donghyuck has changed since they’d last met in person. He’s not taller, but he’s more present now, surer of himself, his jaw a line of cut glass, the childlike softness of his face hardened into something that walks the line between handsome and beautiful.

It isn’t until later, when they’re both in bed and the lights are off, and Mark is lying on his back and staring wide-eyed at the ceiling, that Donghyuck finally says something significant. He’s curled up into a ball facing away from Mark, and even though they aren’t touching, Donghyuck radiates heat.

“I haven’t told my parents yet,” he admits, into the empty expanse of the dark room. “They don’t know I’m back in Korea.”

“Do you plan on telling them?”

“I should,” Donghyuck murmurs. “It’s… difficult.”

There’s a certain weight underlying the words; Mark is far too tired to try and parse its meaning. “It’ll be okay,” he says sleepily, and yawns.

Donghyuck only hums in response, unmoving.

The world trickles down into obscurity, consciousness dissolving in the ripples of the unknown. Mark sleeps. He doesn’t dream.

~

Mark comes back to himself in stages; the first thing that he becomes aware of is the quiet whirr of his broken heater, a limping, sputtering sound. That, and how his feet feel like blocks of ice, while his neck is slick with sweat.

Somehow, over the course of the night, Donghyuck had migrated, shifted from where he’d been curled up on the far-left side of the bed into Mark, head tucked against Mark’s throat, breath a damp brand against his skin. He’s similarly bunched up, hands curled into fists and pressed over Mark’s heart, the hard jut of his knees pressed against Mark’s hip and thigh.

Mark lies there, staring blankly up at the ceiling, and tries to school his expression into something that’s slightly less embarrassing, cracked open. He feels as though he’s floating, anchored only by the points of contact between him and Donghyuck, the sensation of Donghyuck solid and warm next to him, the hot gust of his breath against his collarbone. Donghyuck’s hair isn’t very soft—likely from over-processing—and it itches, from where it falls against his chin and cheek, but Mark is painfully sentimental, too enamored to even attempt to move away.

Maybe it should be strange, the way Donghyuck fits against him, worn edges of a puzzle piece long lost but never forgotten, the way Mark suddenly feels as though he’s twelve all over again, huddled under a lopsided pillow fort and pressed against all the sharp angles of his best friend. Donghyuck’s own hands are cold, even over the material of Mark’s shirt, hard-knuckled and bruising against his chest.

The breath he lets out is shaky, rattling in his chest, aching in his throat. Donghyuck shifts then, making a quiet noise of complaint, before rolling away entirely. He turns his face into the pillow, hair falling over his eyes so that all Mark can see is the delicate shell of his ear, the downy hairs at the base of his neck. His shirt is too big on him—gathered beneath him a mess of twisted cloth.

Mark props himself up on an elbow, half afraid to lean over to take it all in. He steels himself—his simple, wanting heart of glass—and rises, gently tugging the blankets over Donghyuck’s prone form. Donghyuck doesn’t move at all as Mark leaves, still fast asleep, expression hidden behind his arm slung over his face, mouth slack in an open pout. 

It’s cold in the living room, the morning sun spilling watery grey light through the half-open blinds, and Mark bites back a yawn as he makes his way to the kitchen, where he stands drowsily over the coffee machine.

Briefly, he wonders if Donghyuck had kept in touch with their mutual high school friends. It’s a bittersweet thought, because Mark himself has hardly even thought of them in the past couple of years—the last message he remembers between him and Jaemin, for instance, is a bland ‘happy birthday’ and an equally underwhelming ‘thanks’ written on his long-abandoned Facebook page. It’s a similar story with Jeno and Jisung—somehow along the way, Mark had drifted apart from all the people and things that had punctuated the warmth of his childhood, his adolescence.

Donghyuck had always been the glue that held them together, probably, always the one who made plans, who kept their group chat running with bad memes and screeching voice notes. Once he’d left, Mark had fallen to the hazards of adulthood and had let himself drift—untethered—at sea.

Shaking himself out of uncomfortable recollections, Mark gets started on making breakfast. He wonders if Donghyuck still likes chocolate chip pancakes with bananas and whipped cream for breakfast, wonders if Donghyuck still has that devilish sweet tooth. Mark’s never been a good chef—and it’s likely that he never will—but six years living alone has been a constant (if not somewhat irritating) lesson in learning to cook for himself. He’s capable of making some mediocre chocolate chip pancakes, even if they are a little mushy on the inside and burnt on the outside.

He’s made a hefty stack of about seven lopsided pancakes when Donghyuck emerges from the bedroom, sleep-rumpled and still yawning. He has a hand at his waistband, rucking up his shirt. Mark’s mouth runs dry at the brief glimpse of that taunting sliver of skin, tan like the rest of Donghyuck. The hand drops, the shirt following. Mark swallows. His tongue feels too big for his mouth.

“Morning,” he manages, and has to fight to get over the bizarre vertigo at actually having some to greet in the morning.

“Hey,” Donghyuck says, and smiles, a small, heartbreaking thing. His hair is a mess, plastered to the right side of his head and sticking out straight on the left side as though he’s just walked through a hurricane. He looks softer in the morning, washed out from the pale light of day. “Are my eyes deceiving me, or are you _cooking_?”

“It’s nothing special,” Mark says, feeling uncharacteristically bashful. In the face of Donghyuck’s smile, he can’t seem to regain his footing. “Just pancakes. I, uh, I didn’t know if you still liked them, but…”

“I like it,” Donghyuck cuts him off, eyes lighting up. “It smells amazing, by the way. I’m just impressed that you haven’t burnt down the kitchen.”

It’s a teasing, thoughtless sort of comment. Mark can’t quite bring himself to say to Donghyuck: _I’ve been cooking for myself just fine for over half a decade_ , because maybe, just maybe, he wants to exist, for just a moment longer, as the clumsy nineteen-year-old Mark Lee of Donghyuck’s memories, the Mark Lee that was—at least a little bit—someone worthwhile to the eighteen-year-old Lee Donghyuck.

“Haha,” he drawls instead, “very funny.”

“I know,” Donghyuck says smugly, and then takes a seat at the kitchen table, because Mark is definitely not fancy enough to have a dining room table. “Ooh, chocolate chips, too? You’re really going all out for me, Mark Lee.”

“Don’t flatter yourself, I make breakfast like this every day,” Mark says, even though Donghyuck’s sardonic smile is a clear indication that they’re both well aware of the fact that Mark’s a lying liar who lies.

Breakfast passes quickly, and Donghyuck absolutely spends the first five minutes blowing hot air up Mark’s ass and gassing him up about his admittedly very mediocre pancakes. It’s nice.

“So, what have you been up to?” Donghyuck asks, having stopped halfway through his third pancake. His appetite’s waned noticeably compared to when they’d last eaten together six years ago, and he chews much quieter, not speaking when his mouth is full. It’s an insignificant change, really, but the fact that it happened at all feels like rubbing salt into an open wound.

“Nothing much,” Mark mumbles. “I’m an author now, though.”

“That’s incredible, Mark,” Donghyuck’s response is dutifully enthusiastic, smile bright, but it’s a fleeting expression, one that drops off into something weaker, solemn, the moment Mark turns back to his own food. “What do you write about?”

When Mark was eleven years old, he wrote a two-hundred-page epic about a boy who sprouted horns overnight. It was—for all intents and purposes—an objectively terrible story, full of spelling errors and blatant plot holes. Nevertheless, Donghyuck had read all two-hundred-pages of it and insisted that he would be Mark’s first and biggest fan. Now, sitting across from him at the kitchen table, Mark thinks about all the things Donghyuck had promised that never came true.

“Romance, mostly,” Mark says, in the most even tone of voice he can manage. His ears burn.

He’s published two books, both of which had received lukewarm responses by the general public, although he’s lucky enough to have garnered a small but loyal following. For someone who writes romance, Mark has never experienced much of it. He’s been in three relationships (more like two-and-a-half, really), none of which lasted more than three months.

“Romance?” Donghyuck quirks an eyebrow, looking vaguely intrigued. “Any reason for that?”

“It sells,” Mark says, flatly.

“Hm,” Donghyuck props his chin up on his palm, and the way he’s looking at Mark one would think that he was peering into the depths of his very soul. “That’s not a very enthusiastic answer.” His mouth twists, an uncertain smile. “But… you’ve always been such a romantic.”

It makes Mark itch, this uncomfortable, stilted conversation between the two of them. Clearly, he isn’t the only one unsure of how to navigate the situation, the weight of six years an anvil over their lungs, a gaping chasm neither are able to bridge.

He shrugs helplessly. “Things change,” he says, a meaningless platitude, and Donghyuck is looking at him with those round, searching eyes.

“Yeah,” Donghyuck murmurs, “I guess they do.”

~

As strange as it may seem, transformation doesn’t occur immediately after Donghyuck moves in. Mark’s daily routine remains consistent, save for some minute deviations—like when he goes out to jog in the morning, he’ll get two bagels instead of one on his way back home, when he stops by the little coffee shop on the corner. (Donghyuck likes the cinnamon chocolate chip bagel, Mark likes the onion and cheese.) Donghyuck tends to wake up before him, but he’s patient enough to wait for Mark to finish his jogs so that they can have breakfast together. He doesn’t go running every morning. Finds he’s less motivated to, now that there’s actually someone waiting on him.

Donghyuck doesn’t talk much about his life in the States, really just passing comments that sound interesting but ultimately add nothing at all to Mark’s knowledge of his time away from Seoul. Donghyuck’s skill at making vapid conversation sound riveting hasn’t deteriorated at all. If anything, it’s only improved, what with Donghyuck’s increased propensity for dramatic flair. He also dodges any and all of Mark’s attempts to find out why he’d returned at all—and why he’s avoiding his parents.

It’s not as though Mark hasn’t tried, really, he’s even asked if Donghyuck wants to practice the piano—there’s a practice room that allows hourly bookings in the university two stations away, but Donghyuck only smiles winningly and rejects the offer. “ _I’m taking a break_ ,” he’d said, breezily, although he’d refused to meet Mark’s stare, _“letting my beautiful hands rest, you know_?” To which Mark could only roll his eyes.

Beyond that, though, Donghyuck’s a good roommate, if not a little annoying. He’s neater than Mark, and a much better cook although he doesn’t seem very inclined to do much of it. They settle into a rhythm—an easy day-in and day-out reminiscent of the melody of their high school days, when Mark spent so many nights sleeping over at Donghyuck’s place that he had an entire drawer dedicated to his clothes.

Mark spends his days relearning the subtle intricacies Donghyuck is made up of—things old and new: the way he still insists on pressing his cold feet between Mark’s shins at night, and now how he smiles closed-mouthed instead of open and animated. Donghyuck’s been tempered with the passing of time, a certain thread of quiescent calm that never existed beforehand. He’s sweeter, although still fully willing to give Mark a hard time about burning their dinner.

But, above all else, he doesn’t talk about music anymore.

It’s the most jarring change. When they’d been kids, Donghyuck would never shut up about all the things that Mark never fully understood despite being willing to listen (something something arpeggios something something Rachmaninoff—it always did go in one ear and out the next with Mark), but now, the most he does is hum quietly along to whatever song Mark has on shuffle while writing. Or, more accurately, while _attempting_ to write.

So, it’s like this: while Donghyuck fits back in his life like he’d never left, the Donghyuck of today is one that feels both familiar and unfamiliar—an echo of a favorite memory, the shadow of a photograph. He’s vibrant in a different way, the disparateness of lighting up a sparkler and watching it fizz versus sitting before a campfire in the gloom of night. He’s warm; still but not stagnant.

It isn’t until a month into Donghyuck’s stay that he brings up anything beyond the haven of Mark’s apartment, its four waiting walls.

“Hey,” he says, from where he’s lying on the couch, his head hanging over the seat and his legs thrown over the back. There’s a lollipop dangling from his parted lips. “Have you spoken to the gang recently?”

“The gang?”

“Jaemin, Jeno, Jisung—you know. The gang.”

“No.”

“Oh,” Donghyuck goes quiet for a moment. “Do you wanna meet up with them?”

Mark pauses, his hands hovering over his laptop keys. “What?”

“I mean, I still have their contact information,” Donghyuck says simply, as if the very suggestion of revisiting their old friends isn’t making Mark break out into a cold sweat. “We should ask them to hang out.”

Mark doesn’t know how to tell Donghyuck that he hasn’t spoken to any of them in years. He doesn’t know where they are, or what they’re doing. He wonders when they’d drifted apart. Wonders why he let adulthood take so much from him. It’s his own fault, really—but there’s the icy drip of anxiety that trickles down his throat, the same old childish fear of rejection, of being left behind, of being forgotten. Mark’s philosophy has always been this: he’ll never be left behind if he’s the one that leaves first, if he’s the one that stops trying before everyone else even has the chance to give up.

He thinks about the way his and Jeno’s texts had dwindled into simple one-word affairs, the way he’d let Jaemin’s calls go unanswered, the way he stopped responding to Jisung in any meaningful way. He’s always been a coward—a bit of a heartbreaker, maybe, according to his second girlfriend who’d only lasted a month before they’d split—and maybe it’s that quality that made his and Donghyuck’s falling out such a simple affair. Because Mark has always been the kind of person to wear his heart on his sleeve, except he’s never been very good at letting people stay long enough to peer into the core of it.

“I can hear you thinking,” Donghyuck interrupts, and then swings his legs off the back of the couch, twisting to peer over the edge. His eyes are crinkled in a smile, and the look of it is familiar enough that it sends a thrill through Mark, a little one-two stutter of his traitorous heart.

But, as he looks at Donghyuck’s sweeping, inquisitive gaze, he realizes—maybe Donghyuck knows, maybe he’s more than aware of Mark’s hesitations, his drawn-out fears. Donghyuck’s always been the best at reading him, after all. He’s got him cracked open like an overripe pomegranate; an old book worn down. Maybe the truth of the matter is this: six years and an ocean apart haven’t been enough to change the core of what makes them _them_.

“I…” Mark starts, “I don’t know. It’s… it’s a little out of the blue, isn’t it?”

“Lucky you have me,” Donghyuck says, and his smile is a little odd, one that Mark hasn’t seen before. “I’m _spontaneous_.”

“That you are,” Mark snorts, thinking about how Donghyuck showed up on his doorstep a month ago and how neither of them have even attempted to address all the implications. “Whatever. Do what you want.”

“I will,” Donghyuck says loftily, and looks at Mark with his chin tilted up in challenge.

“Why do you look like you’re gonna fight me? I just said that you can do whatever you want.”

“Fine,” huffs Donghyuck. “You’ll see.”

Another thing unchanged. Lee Donghyuck, a fiery spirit. Always picking useless fights. Mark wouldn’t have him any other way.

And so, it goes: Donghyuck texts Jaemin, who texts Jisung and Jeno (because of course they’ve kept in touch), and Mark finds his Sunday suddenly occupied by three familiar figures standing at his door, Donghyuck hanging off his shoulder as he greets them.

“Hey,” says Jeno, a forced casualness to it all, and Mark returns the greeting, accepts Jaemin’s arms around his waist, his winter-cold nose to the hollow of Mark’s throat. Jisung’s eyes are suspiciously red-rimmed when he meets Mark’s gaze over Jaemin’s newly blonde hair. They don’t mention it.

They’re transported to the past—high-schoolers huddled around the coffee table on the floor, boxes of takeout split between the five of them. A childhood memory brought back to life. And it’s like this that Mark’s friends slot themselves back into place as though they’d never left, the same faces, same voices, a little sharper around the edges, older, a little blurred.

He’ll drink to it.

When the living room is cleared, hours later—empty takeout boxes, crushed beer cans—and all that’s left is Donghyuck stretched across the couch, languid, Mark feels his shoulders deflate.

“That wasn’t so bad, was it?” As always, Donghyuck’s riding Mark’s wavelength, a veritable mind reader. Or maybe he’s just observant, or it’s that he still knows Mark like the back of his own hand.

Mark nods, conceding. “It wasn’t,” he says, a quiet admission, and wraps his fingers around the body of his favorite mug. It’s cool to the touch—his heater’s still broken, but by now it’s an afterthought. He doesn’t feel cold at all.

The coil of Donghyuck’s fingers drifting across the back of his neck is a wondrous thing, but Mark forces calm and tilts his head backward to meet Donghyuck’s unfocused stare.

“I hope you keep in touch with them,” Donghyuck murmurs, oddly serious, voice misty and faraway. “It’d… it’d be good for you.”

Six years and an ocean apart have done nothing to change the way it’s always been Donghyuck looking out for Mark.

“Maybe,” he says, too tired to retort with something like _I don’t need you mothering me_ , because he thinks—or, well, he knows—that Donghyuck means well.

They clean up after that, and Donghyuck announces that he’s tired and going to go to bed early. The door closes behind him, a resounding quiet click of the latch.

Alone again in the living room, Mark sits in front of his laptop and glowers bitterly at the taunting blank screen, the two meaningless pages of absolute _garbage_ that he’s going to have to send to Doyoung for feedback. Doyoung’s going to tear him a new one for this, but then again, Mark figures that the man’s already well-versed in the art of dragging him up off his sorry ass. The final manuscript isn’t due until summer, anyways, but Doyoung _has_ been asking for an outline, or at the very least the first chapter.

It’s as Mark’s lamenting this fact that his phone rings—Doyoung, because he probably has his third eye wide fucking open—and Mark grimaces. It’s eight p.m., still early yet, and Donghyuck is already asleep.

“Hey,” Mark says, and then braces himself with his phone a good foot away from his ear so that Doyoung has space to yell.

“Mark Lee,” he hears, a tinny distorted voice from the phone speaker. “ _Where_ is your outline?”

“Um,” Mark says, “about that…”

A long, drawn out sigh. Doyoung may very well be sick of him by now, but it’s clear that he’s also mostly unsurprised. “You haven’t started, have you?”

“Depends on your definition of ‘start’,” Mark tries sheepishly, to which he’s met by another longsuffering sigh.

After a moment: “How about this, then,” Doyoung’s back to his regular crisp professionalism, a sort of chilling efficiency that’s always made Mark tired just witnessing. “Swing by the office tomorrow. I know we usually don’t do this, but I’ll see if I can help you hammer something out over the course of the next week or two.”

Mark thinks about Donghyuck, curled up under the blankets and fast asleep, and thinks about leaving the comfortable encirclement of his apartment, wonky heater and all. He thinks about how he hasn’t seen Doyoung in person for well over four months, and again how he hasn’t left the apartment at all aside from his morning runs in just as long.

He twists his fingers around the fraying thread of his old college sweater and bites the bullet. “Okay,” he says, after a silence that feels like a barbell settled atop his sternum. “What time should I get there?”

“Ten a.m.,” Doyoung tells him, decisive. “But clear out the rest of your week, too. I think we’ll end up needing the time.”

“Okay,” Mark repeats, a little numb, a little dazed.

“See you then,” and then silence—Doyoung’s hung up.

Mark sighs and drops his face into his hands. It’s at times like this that he’s brutally reminded of the pains of being a so-called ‘creative’, someone whose living hinges on his ability to piece together meaningful, beautiful things. And it’s funny, because Mark has never once been proud of anything he’s written, these bitten off words like cardboard dust in his mouth—and here he is, agonizing over what feels like an unintelligible lifetime stretch of more grueling dissatisfaction.

It’s exhausting, being miserable all the time. He doesn’t know how else to exist, anymore—he’s wading through this endless grey sludge and all that’s left of him is the drowning figure of a haphazardly built marionette with its strings cut. An occupational hazard, Johnny sometimes calls it, the tortured artist archetype. It’s almost laughable, really. Mark doesn’t _want_ to be any sort of stereotype, doesn’t want to know the feeling of languishing in his own monotonous despair.

He thinks about Donghyuck, his melancholic mirror eyes, his pink, smiling mouth, his golden skin his slender limbs. His empty promises, his fierce affection, his shrieking laugh.

His fingers hover, paralyzed, over the keyboard.

In all the years of his burgeoning career, Mark has made it a point to never write about Lee Donghyuck.

 _I write romance novels for a living_ ; he says when asked. _I write stories that I want to read_. That’s a lie. Mark hates every romance he’s ever written.

In interviews what he never says is this: the truth of the matter is that he does not attach himself in any meaningful capacity to his own writing, his numerous fictions. They are not a representation nor a manifestation of the fabric of what makes Mark Lee who he is. He does not write the stories that demand to be told—no, these exist exclusively in the pavilion of his hollow ribs, safe, secret, kept within the same sequestered compartment in which he stores all his care—his tender recollections—of Donghyuck.

Mark writes about love, but he never writes about _his_ kind of love: his fractured, agonizing desire to crawl into and exist beneath Donghyuck’s skin, to become something as inconspicuous yet vital as the air that cycles through his lungs, escapes his parted lips. Mark has always kept the ugliest parts of himself closest to his heart, its flayed skin of suet, pulsing blue and black. It’s obsessive, cataclysmic in its scope, its scale, and Mark holds his breath and counts the seconds down to oblivion.

The love stories he tells have never been inspired by Donghyuck, because the world wants to read something beautiful, something gentle, and what Mark feels for Donghyuck has never been that. He justifies this in several ways. One: denial—Donghyuck isn’t the love of Mark’s life; he just _can’t_ be, because… well. Just because. Two: Mark might be able to write about the experience of being in love, but not the experience of being loved in return. Three: above all else, he’s _afraid—_ not prepared to cut himself open like that, to leave the bloody remains of his entrails splattered across a crisp white page for all the world to see.

He stares at the empty document before him, thinks about how years ago, the first time he’d met Doyoung, he’d said: _I don’t need to know love to be able to write it_ , and it’s true, really—imagination can take you anywhere, everywhere. To know the intimacies of reciprocity is a perquisite, not a necessity. All this time and Mark has never written a single story that he holds close to home. Except now, as he thinks about Donghyuck—a single door and a looming abyss away—he wonders, then, what it could be like.

 _Dedicated to the one person I care about most in the world_ , he types, then hits backspace immediately, awash with a strange unnamable shame.

Maybe Mark will never be one of those writers who weave pieces of themselves into their words, who leave the scattered remnants of their own souls among the branches of their sentences, their ocean paragraphs. Mark thinks about destiny, about fate, about his own tenuous grip on any semblance of control. He’s always been easy to manipulate, easily swayed by the whims of those around him. He lacks strength, resolve. Never once has Mark felt like the arbiter of his own will.

Those who don’t know him well always say that this is part of his charm, that he’s just so agreeable, earnest to a fault. But it’s never been out of genuine compassion, Mark thinks, but rather an embarrassing, all-encompassing fear of disappointing those around him, of being judged. He isn’t brave; he doesn’t look at the ugliness of the world and choose to be kind in spite of it—he’s kind because he is a coward, petrified of the alternatives.

All the air leaks out of him, exhaustion washing over him anew. He’s so goddamn tired.

He doesn’t want to write anymore; he doesn’t want to _think_.

He reaches forward and slams his laptop shut.

If he pretends that his problems don’t exist, then maybe they really will disappear overnight. _You’re so full of shit_ , the voice in his head says, and it sounds suspiciously like Doyoung’s voice. Yeah, he is—but what else is new? It doesn’t matter anyways, he justifies, since he’s going to the office tomorrow. Now, though, maybe he should go to bed early, too; try to absorb the warmth and vitality of Donghyuck, curled up asleep only inches away.

The bedroom is cold, dark—moonlight spilling silver through the slits between the blinds. Donghyuck is a shapeless lump beneath the covers, and Mark stills at the doorway for a second to take the image in before he goes to the bathroom to wash up.

On the sink is a cup, and in that cup are two toothbrushes. Pink for Mark, orange for Donghyuck. There are scattered indications of Donghyuck’s presence all over, a month into this strange cohabitation of theirs. Evidence of his existence, trinkets of his touch. His favorite strawberry shampoo in the shower; his fancy shaving cream, his electric razor in the cabinet. His towel, grey, next to Mark’s, blue.

The tile is a frozen wasteland beneath Mark’s feet.

Mark brushes his teeth looking at that grey towel, which is cheap, already fraying at the edges. He thinks that Donghyuck probably deserves better than this cramped apartment, these narrow four walls. Donghyuck has always been larger than life, a herculean personality compacted within an utterly human body. It seems a shame, for his vivacity to be so confined. But he seems happy, here. Content despite of it. (Because of it?)

 _One-hundred-and-eighteen, one-hundred-and-nineteen, one-hundred-and-twenty_ , Mark counts silently, and spits foam into the sink. His reflection in the mirror is a drawn, colorless thing. He rinses his face with water and avoids his own tired stare.

The bedroom is a serene scene, Mark thinks, just by virtue of the knowledge that _Donghyuck_ is the lump beneath the blankets. When Donghyuck had first arrived, Mark had entertained the notion of buying a futon for him but had quickly discarded the thought by the second night, when he’d woken up to the crush of Donghyuck’s thighs around his own.

Mark lifts the corner of the blankets, finds himself looking at Donghyuck’s back. Donghyuck’s wearing one of Mark’s old shirts, he thinks, a threadbare white tee with a flower stitched along the collar. As he settles in, Donghyuck stirs, half-turning so that he’s on his back, groping blindly for Mark. His fingers pass along Mark’s hip, settle and curl into the pocket of his sweatpants. 

“Mark?” He mumbles, groggy. “What time is it?”

“Still early,” Mark murmurs, “go back to sleep.” 

Donghyuck hums, an acquiescence. His eyes are closed, and in the shadows, Mark can vaguely make out the dark line his lashes draw, the shadow they cast across his cheeks. His hand is moving, still, along Mark’s hip, his elbow, his shoulder, neck, before coming to a rest at his face. Mark watches, intent, unbreathing. Donghyuck’s touch is cold against the thin skin of Mark’s throat and jaw, thumb a gentle pressure against his pulse.

“Good night,” Donghyuck whispers, more breath than sound, and Mark echoes the sentiment.

It’s like that that Mark drifts, spinning unmoored in an unfathomable ocean. Tethered only by the cold press of Donghyuck’s skin against his own. To love is an artless misery, caught in these tender shadowed moments.

~

When Mark was ten and Donghyuck was nine, he went to Donghyuck’s very first official piano recital. This was the first time Mark had ever been to a proper concert hall, and the first time he had heard Donghyuck play something that wasn’t for practice. He knew, objectively, that Donghyuck was ostensibly Very Talented—or at least, that’s what his parents told him, and what the neighborhood aunties liked to titter about.

Donghyuck started taking piano lessons when he was just three years old, chubby toddler legs far too short to reach the ground or the pedals, and so one of Mark’s earliest memories is of Donghyuck sitting atop a wooden bench that doubled as a throne, a plastic stepstool placed beneath his bare feet. Even clearer is the memory of the piano, an upright black Yamaha with shiny ivory keys and a chip on the corner from when Mark had slammed face-first into it when he was seven and subsequently spent the rest of the afternoon in tears.

On the Saturday evening of Donghyuck’s recital, Mark doesn’t remember much beyond how badly his starched collar itched, how his skinny grey tie felt as though it was suffocating him. They arrived just as the lights in the audience were dimming, and Mark sat between his mother and his father, looking as Donghyuck walked, straight-backed and confident, to center-stage.

From his vantage point in the audience, several rows from the front, Donghyuck looked simultaneously miniature and statuesque, his usually disheveled sun-bleached hair coiffed into something stiff and shiny. He was wearing a suit like Mark’s, except his was all black, and his tie was, for some reason, emerald green. Mark felt insignificant then, watching his best friend, felt the oppressive semi-silence of the audience. Behind him, a woman was sniffling; it was spring, allergies abound.

Donghyuck bowed, and his collar bent unnaturally and lifted off the back of his neck—his suit was too big, and the sleeves hung just past his palms. He was blinding under the spotlight, and even in the shadows of the audience Mark felt his eyes squinting.

The night before the recital, Donghyuck had snuck into Mark’s bedroom. He had crawled in through Mark's window, because he always insisted on it even though Mark's parents were completely fine with him coming in through the front door. Mark was on the second floor, and Donghyuck always shimmied his way up the tree that stood between their two houses. It was a difficult climb, and Donghyuck always got scolded by his mother for 'risking his hands', except Mark knew that Donghyuck _had_ to make the climb in the same way he _had_ to hop over the cracks on the sidewalk, _had_ to pick out the blue M&Ms, because that was simply just another attribute that made Lee Donghyuck Lee Donghyuck and not some paltry imitation.

The climb had made Donghyuck's face a pretty, flushed pink, and his hair was a disaster. Before he even said anything, he bowed his head and waited for Mark to pick the leaves out of it. It was tradition, Mark thought, a little happily. _He_ was the only one who got to pick the leaves out of Donghyuck's hair. _His_ room was the only room Donghyuck scaled trees for, risked his hands for.

"I have my recital tomorrow," Donghyuck said, when he was free of leaves, and sitting cross-legged on Mark's duvet. He looked expectant, except Mark didn't know what it was he was expecting.

"I know," he said, and then dusted off his windowsill from where Donghyuck had tracked in dirt. "Are you nervous?"

Donghyuck, nine-years-old and the wisest person in the world, shot him a dirty look. " _No_ ," he said emphatically. "Why would I be nervous?"

This was somewhat unsurprising, because Donghyuck was always the fearless, headstrong type. Mark secretly suspected that Donghyuck had entered the world kicking and screaming, owner of a voice that demanded to be heard. He wasn’t afraid of anything, Mark thought, and was acutely jealous. He couldn't imagine doing anything in front of an audience. The last time he’d done a presentation in front of his class he had almost cried, and Donghyuck had had to coax him out of the bathroom afterwards with the promise of chocolate chip cookies.

Mark shrugged a little helplessly. "It's your first recital. Isn't it normal to be nervous?"

"So?" Donghyuck said, and looked at Mark with an expression of open contempt. "It's not as though it's a competition. The only people watching are going to be family members of the kids performing. I don't care."

And that was that, really. Donghyuck wasn't nervous, and so Mark wouldn’t be, either. If Donghyuck had no qualms about his recital, then why should he?

But, fast-forward to the recital, Mark watched as Donghyuck settled down on that bench—not wooden, this time, but properly padded, a shiny black leathery material—and he felt as though his heart had come to an abrupt standstill behind his ribs, an uncomfortable tightness that made it difficult to breathe. He _was_ nervous, he realized, even as he saw the complete and utter tranquil stillness that had taken over Donghyuck's straight-backed form, hands hovering, deliberate, over the black and white keys.

The spotlight trained on Donghyuck was a halo, contouring him in white-gold. Mark imagined Donghyuck sprouting wings, even as his hands came down upon the keys, a beautiful, jarring clash. The first movement of Beethoven's _Pathétique_ , according to the program that had been handed out earlier. Mark remembered snatches of the piece, when Donghyuck had practiced. It certainly didn't sound very pathetic to him—it sounded melancholic at first, but later like a storm, a racing, roaring thing; vacillation between contradictory sounds that Mark didn’t quite understand. But maybe it was exactly this outpour of emotion that _was_ the pathetic thing, the frustrated melody of a dying voice, an unseeing rage.

It sounded beautiful, Mark thought, but somehow he knew that it wasn't the song itself but _Donghyuck_ who made it beautiful, with his perfect posture, his determined frown, his fingers a textbook blur across the keys. He remembered Donghyuck's complaints about how his hands were too small, that they'd had to rearrange parts of the piece for him to be able to reach. He was upset about it, Mark thought, even though his explanation had been flippant. Donghyuck was a born perfectionist, and he'd been irked at the thought of performing a bastardized version of a song he respected.

He sat there, on the edge of his seat, and felt as though something terrifying was happening, a widening chasm opening up at his feet between him and Donghyuck, a chasm which lead to none other than the abyss. Donghyuck, elevated on stage, silhouetted in light, his fingers the conductor of a terrifying tempestuous melody. Mark, in the shadows of a faceless audience. He felt a sudden fierce, aching want, a noiseless desire for Donghyuck to turn and look at him. But, of course, he didn’t, head bowed over his hands, and Mark was gripped with despair.

This was a tale as old as time—Mark in the shadows, watching; Donghyuck in the light, ablaze—or, at the very least, it’s a story as old as Mark and Donghyuck’s friendship, which was all Mark had ever known. Their friendship was mapped out for them before their birth, consequence of fate’s gentle guiding hand.

It was a simple story. Mark’s parents bought a house in the outskirts of Seoul, in a quiet, gated suburb. Their neighbors were another married couple: Donghyuck’s parents. This was three years before Mark’s birth. Then, four months after he came into the world, their neighbor Mrs. Lee would discover that she was pregnant, a boy, and that was the beginning of Mark and Donghyuck’s inexorable bond. The beginning of the end, really.

He doesn’t remember a time without Lee Donghyuck—he does not have any recollection of the ten months that he was alone—and Donghyuck, ten months younger but never one to be left behind, nipped at Mark’s heels and came into the world with a bang, in a labor that lasted only thirty minutes.

 _Because I was excited to meet you_ , Donghyuck said, once, when they were thirteen and fourteen, at the swimming pool, and his eyes were alight with a joke Mark didn’t understand. _You were alone, and so the universe created me_. Except it must have been more than that, Mark thinks. Donghyuck was the deliberate creation, and it was Mark who simply happened upon existence, waiting for some sort of answer, some sort of purpose. Maybe it was this: _I was born waiting for you_ , he thought, looking at sun-browned skin of Donghyuck’s bare shoulders, the moles dotting the ridges of his spine.

So, it was like that; this friendship of theirs.

Maybe it was inevitable. Even before Mark knew what that momentous four-lettered word meant, five years old and crying in a sandbox, he’d had Donghyuck. Donghyuck, whose first course of action had been to take a shovel to Mark’s ribs so that he could dig a cavern in his chest to make a home out of his heart. Breathing life into his atriums, fists a vice around the ventricles. Donghyuck, who was small but vivid, the only splash of color in Mark’s sepia life, who helped shape him just as much as his parents did. Mark’s earliest memories—good, bad, and inconsequential—all burnished gold with him.

Lee Donghyuck, whose very being predated the word ‘love’.

Nineteen years with him, followed by six years without. Captured moments stolen in between breaths, easy as anything. Made and then unmade.

~

“We should go somewhere,” says Donghyuck, first thing in the morning. He’s sitting at the kitchen table, chin propped up on his palm, a finger tracing a thoughtless loop around the rim of his mug. He’s changed out of Mark’s shirt already, now properly dressed in a maroon turtleneck and a pair of cream-colored slacks.

He looks put-together, and even though Mark knows that this is how he dresses usually now, he can’t seem to reconcile this version of Donghyuck with the Donghyuck who once exclusively wore Adidas sweats and the same grey crewneck every day. Another trivial transformation: the sensation of peeling a cuticle too far only to expose a thin line of tender, stinging flesh. Skin unravelling; at the core of it the viscous ooze of a bleeding heart.

Donghyuck looks fully alert, having woken an indeterminate amount of time before Mark. On the other hand, Mark stands at his usual spot, hanging over the coffee machine, bleary-eyed and waiting for a mediocre cup. He’s not going out for a run today, the thought of having to meet Doyoung having already sapped him of what little energy he has.

“I have to go to the office,” he says apologetically. “I think Doyoung’s really wanting me to get the jump on the new novel.”

“New novel, huh,” Donghyuck muses, and grins. “Do you mean the blank document you’ve been glaring at nonstop for the past month?”

“Yep,” he pops the ‘p’, a drawn-out, vaguely irritated sound. “That’s the one.”

Donghyuck hums consideringly. “Then, you go do that,” he says, eventually, and there’s a distinctly determined expression on his face. “But we should definitely go out tonight.”

“Sure,” Mark was always going to agree, anyways. “Where to?”

“It’d be boring if I told you now,” Donghyuck says, and his eyes form smiling crescents.

“Fine then, keep your secrets,” Mark snorts. “So, what are your plans for the rest of the day?”

This time, the lull in the conversation is longer, Donghyuck’s open expression shuttering. “Not sure,” he says airily.

The thing about their friendship—about Donghyuck’s uncanny ability to read Mark like an open book—is that it’s a two-way street. Mark can see through Donghyuck, too. And he knows when he’s lying. Donghyuck’s always been a good liar, really, but even still he has his tells. He’s too casual, too dismissive. His words are made of air.

But Mark’s forever a pacifist, and a coward. He doesn’t push.

“I’ll try and be back before dinner,” he says, instead. “Like, five or so. Maybe earlier, if Doyoung’s in a good mood.”

“You act like he’s waiting with a guillotine at the ready,” Donghyuck snickers. “The guy’s just there to help you, you know?”

“Yeah,” says Mark darkly, and swallows a mouthful of coffee that tastes like motor oil. “That’s if he doesn’t decide to strangle me first.”

“Someday you should introduce us,” Donghyuck suggests, and reaches forward to smooth out the shoulder of Mark’s sweater. His touch is feather light.

“I think you’d give him a conniption within five minutes of knowing him,” says Mark, because it’s true, and because he wants to see the widening of Donghyuck’s wicked grin.

“You give me too much credit,” Donghyuck demurs, a false bashfulness. His eyes are glittering. “Well, anyhow. Good luck with your fairytales, Hemingway two-point-oh.”

“Thanks,” Mark says drily, and doesn’t realize until he’s outside, in the cold, that he hadn’t actually managed to figure out if Donghyuck was going to stay in or go out. He sighs, shoving his hands into the pockets of his long puffer coat, and tilts his head up to look at the sunless sky.

It’s not a cloudy day necessarily, but the sky is a stretch of pale grey, and the air is cold and crisp. Mark’s mouth still tastes of bad coffee, and he resolves to ask if Doyoung has any snacks that he can pilfer.

Doyoung is clearly waiting for him by the time Mark makes it to the office, cheeks chapped and red from the cold, juxtaposed against the damp heat of his throat where his scarf had been tied. Doyoung’s dressed head-to-toe in charcoal grey, dark hair swept up and away from his forehead. He looks high-strung as always, fingers tapping a ruthless beat against the mahogany of his desk. His wire-rimmed glasses are pushed up against his forehead, and Mark squints and wonders if they’re even real, or just there to be a fashion statement.

“You’re not late,” Doyoung observes, and quirks an eyebrow at Mark. It’s the first time they’ve met in person in several months. “Color me impressed.”

“You know, I’m not actually the incompetent slob you think I am,” Mark complains, and Doyoung only shrugs.

“If the shoe fits,” he drawls, and then gestures for Mark to take a seat across from him. “Now, tell me: have you failed to hand in an outline because you didn’t have the time to write an outline, or because you don’t have an idea to outline _for_?”

The thing about Kim Doyoung, Mark thinks, is that even though he’s a hard-ass, and even though he’s always insulting Mark in one way or another… he’s a brilliant editor, and an incredible support. For someone who acts as judgmental as he does, Doyoung is actually one of the most understanding people Mark has ever come across. Mark exhales and collapses in the seat.

“Second thing,” he grumbles. “I have no idea what I’m going to write. Everything feels played out, and I don’t think I can write something I don’t care about this time around.” 

He can practically feel the weight of Doyoung’s stare, that flinty look in his eye. The obvious _this time around?_ hangs between them, a tangible thing. It’s the truth—of the two novels Mark published previously, he doesn’t particularly care about either of them. Hadn’t even while in the midst of writing them. Standard YA fare, no real plot, just a simple coming of age romance. It was nice, how easy they were, but as of now Mark’s tired of the same storyline told in different words.

“I was thinking about a fantasy,” Mark suddenly says, and sits upright. He feels jittery, shot through with lightning. “I know it’s not what I usually do, but…”

“Go ahead,” Doyoung says, and he’s still staring at Mark with that laser-focus, brows furrowed.

“It’s about a boy,” and he thinks of that 200-paged epic from fourteen years ago, the one that Donghyuck had pledged himself to, and he thinks of the countless plot holes, innumerable spelling errors—a story that _meant_ something to him—and forges onward, “a boy who wakes up and finds that he’s sprouted horns, overnight.” A made pariah, a hated thing.

It’s like this: Mark suggests the story on a whim, and Doyoung tells him to take it and run with it. It’s _his_ , Mark thinks, wonderingly, as he stares down at the blue notebook that he and Doyoung had hovered over all afternoon, at the scribbles and the scratched-out parts and the pages worth of notes and annotations. It was nothing, a passing thought, but now it’s _something_.

He holds the notebook close to his chest and cradles it the entire walk home. The grey sky sinks, dissolves in daubs of orange and blue and purple.

Donghyuck is sitting on the living room floor when he gets home, hands clasped to his chest as though locked in a prayer, eyes unfocused. He startles when the door slams shut behind Mark, gust of cold air sweeping in, and then smiles, like clouds clearing after a storm.

“Hey; good day?”

“Pretty great,” Mark admits, and then braces himself against the way his stomach flips at Donghyuck answering beam. “Doyoung and I got a lot done, surprisingly.”

Donghyuck unfolds, taking Mark’s hand to pull himself upright. He wobbles for a moment before finding purchase against Mark’s shoulders, letting out a huff of surprised laughter at his near slip. Mark staggers at the sudden weight, hands reflexively coming to grasp at Donghyuck’s forearms to steady the two of them.

“That’s amazing,” Donghyuck says, and then takes a step away from Mark, hands sliding off his shoulders. He doesn’t try to shake Mark’s grip around his wrists, which are trembling minutely. “You should tell me about it over dinner—you’re not too tired to go out, right?”

“No,” Mark says carefully, eyes roving across Donghyuck’s face, at his waiting expression. “I did promise, after all.”

“As reliable as always,” teases Donghyuck, heart-shaped smile and all.

A few minutes later, standing at the curb, Donghyuck flags down a cab with a wave of his hand and a whistle so shrill that it makes Mark’s ears ring. “Dude, what the hell?”

“Oh, my bad,” Donghyuck says, a sheepish smile, as they slide in together. Donghyuck doesn’t move that extra few inches in, sits with his thigh pressed up tight against Mark’s. “Habit. It’s a lot harder to get a cab to pay attention to you in New York, so you end up having to get kind of aggressive with it.”

It’s Donghyuck’s first real anecdote about his life in the States that Mark hasn’t had to pry out of him. He’s struck with the image of Donghyuck, alone in his cream-colored sweater, fingers in his mouth to make that awful sharp whistle, standing at the edge of the curb surrounded by strangers. He wonders what it was like, to be alone in a foreign country. Wonders, then, if Donghyuck was alone at all. The uncomfortable realization that he knows nothing, really, about Donghyuck’s life for the past six years, is one that sticks heavy in the back of Mark’s throat, and one that he tries doggedly to ignore.

It’ll come in time; he tells himself. Rome wasn’t built in a day, after all, and Donghyuck’s never been one for secrets.

Donghyuck rattles off an address entirely unfamiliar to Mark, and then leans back to rest his head against Mark’s shoulder. His hair is cold against Mark’s cheek and smells of that strawberry shampoo of his. “It’ll be a twenty-minute drive,” he murmurs, and then takes hold of Mark’s hand furtively, as though the intertwining of their fingers is a secret to be kept.

Maybe it is. Mark tightens his grip, feels the delicate shift of Donghyuck’s bones beneath his skin. He’s solid; a tangible thing. Something on the fringes of relief swells in Mark’s chest, a desperate, heady sensation. He bites back a giddy smile, watching as Donghyuck’s thumb rubs thoughtless circles along his knuckles.

The taxi drops them off in a quiet residential district, with just a single streetlight that casts a ghostly glow over the empty street.

“Where _is_ this?” Mark asks, and hunches further into his coat. “This place feels like it came straight out of a horror movie.”

Donghyuck snickers. “Oh, don’t be so dramatic. It’s just a little further, c’mon, here,” he gestures for Mark to follow, and leads them down the road, where he makes an abrupt turn into a narrower street, and up a hidden flight of stairs. At the top of the stairs is a door: unadorned with any signs, slate grey.

“Seriously, have you brought me here to kill me?”

“Mark,” Donghyuck sighs, longsuffering. “If I wanted to kill you, I’d have smothered you in your sleep. Give me some credit.”

At that, he pushes the door open.

It’s warm—that’s the first thing Mark notices. It’s a bar, or something along those lines, and the lights are a dark, syrupy pulse of blues and pinks. It’s filled with smoke, a mixture of tobacco and machine, a palpable weight that makes everything seem hazy, dreamlike. It’s surprisingly packed with people, even though the room isn’t big by any means. There are clusters of tables that surround a stage at the very back of the room. On the stage is a woman in a silken cocktail dress, crooning something sweet and indistinct into a microphone, her eyes half-lidded and sultry.

Mark squints, sees the mirage of four others behind the singing woman—musicians, he notes. Someone on a keyboard, someone with a double bass, then a saxophone, and drums. 

“It’s a jazz bar,” he realizes after a few moments of careful listening, and Donghyuck turns to beam at him, wide and beautiful beneath the neon lights.

“Isn’t it incredible?” Donghyuck enthuses, and casts his arms wide open, spinning once as if taking it all in. (And maybe it’s Mark’s imagination, but he thinks that he can see the smoke curl itself around Donghyuck, enveloping him in its indolent embrace.) “I found it two weeks ago,” he explains, curling his fingers around Mark’s wrist—cold—and tugs him towards the bar, instead of a table.

“It’s nice,” Mark says, because he doesn’t know what else to say. It’s more than nice, really—it feels like something out of a movie, with its bleeding lights and treacle smog. In here, he feels everything acutely, as if life’s been taken down to a fraction of its speed, a strange illusion. Each time he blinks the darkness behind his closed eyelids is an eternity and then another.

Donghyuck orders for the two of them in a voice that’s just barely audible over the gentle murmur of the song, and turns to Mark, chin cradled in his palm. “I just really like this place,” he admits, “so I wanted to bring you here.”

Conversation flows like water between the two of them—time and a river wearing divots in stone—hunched over two glasses of soda, a platter of finger foods split amongst themselves.

Mark looks at Donghyuck, under the blue-purple-pink lights, his rounded edges, his downturned eyes. The curl of his hair, deliberately tousled. The curve of his neck and its constellation of moles. Donghyuck is the amalgamation of a thousand versions of the boy Mark grew up with, and it’s only one instance of far too many that Mark wants—desperately, _achingly_ —to kiss him. To cradle his face between his hands, pass his fingers over his mouth, his cheekbones, the delicate skin just beneath his eyes.

But Mark’s never been a risktaker— _always so governed by fear_ —and so his hands remain firmly wrapped around the cold surface of his perspiring glass.

It’s here that Donghyuck talks a little of America, of his time abroad.

“You know between the two of us you were always the better English speaker,” Donghyuck says, and laughs. “All those years I spent half-flunking out of English in school really did me no favors, honestly. I spent my first year there totally lost—it was just luck of the draw that I wasn’t scammed out of anything.” Unspoken goes the words, _I was alone in a country I’d never been, and I struggled, and it was as exhilarating as it was the loneliest year of my life._

Mark spends the next two hours mostly listening, mostly taking Donghyuck in. There’s an embarrassing, foolish part of him that wishes he were a painter, or maybe a photographer—anything but a writer, really—because it seems a waste to let this version of Donghyuck exist in this singular moment alone, to let him go like shifting grains of sand slipping between his fingers, the inevitability of an hourglass newly flipped. It’s a childish desire, one that demands possession, that asks for the impossibility of a forever.

But maybe that’s just the nature of moments like this; truth in the echoing rhythm of the hour hand. Already missing something right in front of him—beauty in ephemerality.

The conversation drifts into silence, not uncomfortable, and Donghyuck leans back in his chair to watch the woman singing. He looks utterly at peace, fingers tapping along his thigh—the same syncopated rhythm, following her lead. Mark recalls all the videos he has downloaded to his laptop, the ones where Donghyuck is on stage in sleek, properly tailored suits, with his hair combed back and his back straight and proud. The almost otherworldly flash of his fingers over the keys. The pride on his face, visible even through the screen, in the pixels. Music woven through Donghyuck’s bones.

And then the past few months of silence; the subtle strangeness of it all—world tilting on its axis.

“Do you miss playing?” Mark asks, suddenly, and Donghyuck turns to him, expression splintered open before he has time to school it into something serene.

“Yes,” Donghyuck says, and then goes abruptly silent, as though he hadn’t meant to say anything at all. Mark sees him mending the cracks, pulling himself together. He doesn’t know what it means. Donghyuck’s next words come out smooth, accompanied by a smile. “But then again, it’s not like you have a piano at your place, and I don’t think I’m desperate enough to have to rent a practice room for an hour or two.”

It’s a comment that sticks.

~

The end of the week finds Mark with a semi-complete outline for his novel, refusing to reveal to Donghyuck any details beyond the fact that the genre is fantasy. It’ll be a surprise, he insists.

“You’ll just have to wait until it gets published to read it, like the rest of my adoring fans,” he says, snatching his notebook back when Donghyuck attempts to take a peek. He sticks his tongue out to drive the point home, and watches as Donghyuck visibly contemplates whether or not he should reach out to yank Mark’s tongue out of his mouth.

After a second, Donghyuck snorts, withdrawing to cross his arms over his chest. “Yeah, yeah, pack it up, discount Tolkien,” but he softens the jab by touching Mark’s wrist with a grin, and Mark knows that that’s Donghyuck-speak for _I’m secretly proud of you_. (Although he does spend the next ten minutes whining about wanting to see the outline—but sometimes Mark _is_ capable of ignoring Donghyuck’s various methods of persuasion.)

It’s a Saturday, and Donghyuck’s managed to talk Mark into going out with him again—this time to a bookstore in another quiet residential area. It’s a cute place, quaint, with arguably too many houseplants and sunshine that pours in from floor-to-ceiling windows. For the most part it’s clean, if not a little cluttered, and there’s an area tucked away in the far back corner with several armchairs and a few nooks for reading. There are beanbags, Mark notes. Nice. 

Interestingly enough, there’s a little brown piano pushed up against the back wall, and it looks as though it’s been through hell and back, covered with scratches that seem more like the result of natural wear and tear rather than deliberate vandalism.

“Is this why you brought me here?” Mark asks, jerking his chin towards the piano.

“Oh, no,” Donghyuck says, although his expression is soft and fond as he glances at the piano. “Though the old owner used to let me come here before recitals to practice here, even though you’re usually not supposed to play on it since it’s vintage. It always calmed me down, for some reason. Low stakes, I guess. Hardly anyone paid attention to me then.” He touches the piano reverently but doesn’t make a move to sit down.

Mark finds that hard to believe—that nobody had paid attention to Lee Donghyuck, the sort of person with the gravitational pull of a collapsing star. One can’t simply _not_ look at him. It just isn’t done.

“It doesn’t look like the one in your house,” Mark says, uncertainly.

“This one’s a spinet ship’s piano, I’m pretty sure,” Donghyuck explains, and then presses his fingers down on the keys. Even to Mark’s untrained ear, it sounds a little bizarre—maybe out of tune, even. “The one you’re used to seeing is a regular console piano. This one’s smaller, height-wise, and here, you can see it’s missing a lot of keys so it’s a lot narrower. It’s made to fit in smaller places. Like, a ship. Plus, the configuration of the keys and strings are a little different, and a lot of professionals think that the sound quality is worse.”

Mark doesn’t chip in with a ‘ _but aren’t you a professional too?’_ although he kind of wants to. “Are we allowed to play it?”

“I don’t know,” Donghyuck shrugs. “The previous owner let me, but I’m pretty sure I was the exception, not the rule.”

“Hang on, I’ll ask,” says Mark, pointedly ignoring Donghyuck’s protests about bothering the staff. He figures there’s no harm in asking. Besides, they’re the only two customers in—it’s not even ten a.m., yet, it seems too early for a bookstore to have really garnered many visitors.

It turns out that they’re technically not allowed to play, but since there’s no other customers at the moment, the girl manning the cash register gives them express permission until others come to peruse the aisles.

“Free to use until others come in,” Mark says pointedly, and Donghyuck looks at him with eyes blown wide.

He takes a seat at the bench but sits with his hands clenched into fists on his lap. His shoulders are hunched, and his face is unreadable. It looks nothing like the unshakeable ease in which he’d existed on stage, nor the laughing joy of him practicing, years ago. He doesn’t look _upset_ , not really, but there’s a certain edge of something unrecognizable that exists in the brown of his irises, and his expression is so deadpan it’s a little unnerving.

It makes Mark sick with confusion, and something like worry. He pushes past the blood-metal tang in his mouth to say, “Shove over,” so that Donghyuck’ll make room for him on the bench.

“God, your ass is way too fat for the two of us to fit,” Donghyuck complains, but dutifully shuffles over to allow for Mark to perch on the edge of the narrow bench, the full length of their thighs squeezed tight together.

“Teach me to play something,” Mark demands, ignoring Donghyuck’s comment.

“Like what?” Donghyuck snorts, derisive, and gives Mark a long scrolling once-over. Which, okay, rude, but not altogether unwarranted, given that Mark really has never had much of a talent for music. Sure, like every other wannabe heartthrob, he’d given guitar the good old college try, and had found that by the time he had worn calluses into the tips of his fingers, he’d gotten thoroughly bored with the instrument, and had shoved it somewhere into the depths of his closet to never be seen again.

The last time Mark had asked Donghyuck to teach him how to play something on the piano, they’d been eight and seven respectively, and it was an afternoon that had ended in tears after Donghyuck slapped Mark for forgetting where the middle C was for the nth time. Donghyuck wasn’t patient, and Mark wasn’t musically inclined, and so it was a match made in hell.

Mark still isn’t musically inclined, but he figures that they’re seventeen years more mature than their last attempt, and he’s (probably) a lot less likely to cry after getting slapped.

“Something simple,” Mark says, “I don’t know. Anything you’d like.”

Donghyuck looks at him, a drawn-out beat, and there’s something about the furrow of his brow—as if he can’t seem to figure Mark out, a puzzle twenty-odd years in the making. “Okay,” he says, finally. “Okay.”

He spends the next half hour walking Mark through the first few bars of Debussy’s _Clair de Lune_ , with Mark playing the right hand and Donghyuck the left. It’s one of the first songs Mark remembers Donghyuck ever playing. Stifling summer afternoons sitting at the foot of the piano, knees drawn to his chest, eyes closed, head listing to the side. Donghyuck above him, the same melody over and over again until it was perfect. The sound of cicadas, leaves rustling in the breeze. Summer-sweet, sweat slick.

Here, in the bookstore, Donghyuck teaches Mark the first six or so bars. They cobble together a staggered melody that’s nowhere near as pretty as Donghyuck’s own version of the song, but Mark can’t bring himself to care—because Donghyuck is smiling, laughing at his mistakes, hands gentle as they move to correct the position of Mark’s fingers. It sounds pretty all the same, even though Mark makes too many mistakes to count, slipping and hitting all the wrong notes, even though he never gets the rhythm of it right.

Donghyuck’s fingers, around Mark’s wrist, are a searing touch. He’s always had pretty hands, Mark muses. Long, slender fingers juxtaposed with protruding knuckles, neatly trimmed nails. Pianist’s hands. Elegant and not delicate, but beautiful all the same. Seeing the press of Donghyuck’s fingers atop yellowed keys, his lovely maker’s hands, Mark thinks that this is what feels right, that _this_ is where they belong.

He resolves, then, to make it a prolonged reality.

The girl manning the register tells them to get off the piano about twenty minutes later, but it’s enough to have perked Donghyuck up a surprising amount. He’s smiling so hard he’s practically glowing, and Mark can’t even bring himself to be (too) annoyed at him when he finds out the actual reason Donghyuck brought them to a bookstore was so that he could find Mark’s previously published books and _read them aloud to him_.

It’s a good day, all things considered.

And so, several days after their trip (it was _not_ a date, Mark thinks, vehemently) to the bookstore, he decides that he should take advantage of the fact that Donghyuck is out doing whatever it is that he does during the day. Donghyuck doesn’t seem to have picked up a job, but he certainly is constantly in and out exploring Seoul. (“I’ve got a lot of time to make up for,” he’d said, brightly, when Mark had asked a few weeks ago. “I went to Lotte World today!” _Alone?_ “Yep!”)

Mark bites the bullet and makes the call.

If Jeno is surprised to hear Mark calling, he doesn’t let it show in his voice.

“Hey,” says Jeno, voice thin but steady through the line. “Good to hear from you, man. How’ve you been?”

“I’ve been doing alright,” Mark says, stomach twisting with nerves. “Anyways, I was just calling to see if you’re free today.”

There’s a pause—no longer than five or so seconds, but to Mark it feels like an eternity. “I’m free after eleven,” Jeno says. “Why? Is there anything you need?”

Mark cringes. He kind of feels like a piece of shit, only calling when he needs a favor, but he figures that this is something that could double as a getting-to-kn0w-his-friend-all-over-again day. “Uh, yeah. I was thinking about, um. Buying a piano.”

The silence on the other end of the line stretches even longer, and Mark briefly considers flinging himself out the window. “A piano,” repeats Jeno. “Dude. I’ve _seen_ your apartment.”

“Yeah, I know,” Mark groans. “It’s pint-sized, I know! It’s just that Donghyuck is staying with me, and…”

“I get it,” Jeno interrupts, and Mark thinks that he can hear Jeno’s smile in his voice. “It’s not a terrible idea, I guess. But aren’t good pianos like, stupid expensive?”

“Which is why I need your help,” Mark says weakly. “You know a lot more about instruments than I do, and I thought we could maybe go, um, thrifting.”

“ _Thrifting_?” Jeno starts laughing. “Oh, hell, sure. Why not? Also, I don’t actually know anything about pianos.”

“But you play instruments!”

“Mark. I was in the high school orchestra. I played the _cello_.”

“Um, same instrumental family?”

“I could throttle you right now,” says Jeno, deadpan.

And it’s simple, after that, to arrange to meet Jeno at the coffee shop just two blocks from Mark’s apartment. They grab an early lunch, and Jeno takes him to a shopping district, where they enter a store that specializes in pianos. Although there are a few newer models, the bulk of the store seems to consist of older pianos. They’re not antique, not really, mostly just secondhand, and Mark knows next to nothing about anything. It’s only because of Jeno’s grounding, ever-calm presence that he doesn’t panic in the face of what looks to be a room with upwards of thirty pianos.

The store consists of a single room with an open floor plan, dingy lights that cast the entire place in a flickering yellow glow. The owner hovers around the edges of the store, eyeing Mark and Jeno with what is either suspicion or glee; it’s hard to tell. There are rows and rows of pianos, big and small, although there only seem to be two grand pianos—one on display, another clearly on death’s door, lopsided and quite sad. 

“I really can’t spend that much money,” Mark admits, because he’s living on a second-rate author’s paycheck, and he also probably shouldn’t be shelling out anything too flamboyant for something he’s absolutely buying on a whim.

He takes a look at one of the newer pianos, the ones at the entrance of the store that are unused and gleaming, and promptly balks at the price tag.

“ _Thirty million won?”_ He whisper-shrieks, ducking away from the hawk-eyed stare of the store owner. “Are they _insane_?” Even the thought of spending that much money on an instrument makes him feel physically ill.

Jeno snorts. “Yeah, welcome to the land of the bourgeoisie.” He gestures towards the far end of the store. “The secondhand ones are in the back; I think we should stick to that.”

“If that’s how much a new one costs…” Mark’s stomach sinks, but before he can slink out of the store, Jeno’s wrapping his fingers around his bicep.

“Hey, calm down,” he says. “Let’s just take a look at the shittier ones, alright? I don’t think Donghyuck’ll mind a mediocre piano as long as it’s you who’s buying it.”

What does _that_ mean?

But he thinks about Donghyuck, softening at the sight of that little run-down instrument at the bookstore, thinks about the gentle drift of his fingers across the keys. Thinks about the tempering of his soul, from a never-ending sprint to a loping gait and a closed mouthed smile.

Donghyuck had never lived in the absolutes, only the-split second flashes of transitory extremes, and the twenty-four-year-old that now lives in his apartment is a lesson in familiarity hidden behind the heavy curtain of temporality. He thinks about Donghyuck’s sharp wit, sarcasm cushioned by a shrieking laugh and far-flung hands. He wants to give Donghyuck something worthwhile, and maybe, even though he’ll likely never be able to afford the sort of piano he deserves, as long as Mark tries, then that has to be _something_ , right?

“I can practically hear the rusty gears in your brain turning,” Jeno says, and when Mark turns to him, he looks decidedly unimpressed.

“Sorry,” Mark sighs. “Overthinking.” _When is he not?_

Mark doesn’t come across the _perfect piano_ or anything romantic like that; after all, he knows about as much about pianos that he does about buying stocks and bonds—which is to say: not much at all—but he eventually settles on a smaller brown piano that reminds him a bit of the one in the bookstore and costs about a million won. (As it turns out, the older a secondhand piano gets, the more it depreciates, because apparently its worth lies heavily in its functionality. Who knew?)

It still hurts his wallet a fair amount, but he bites back a grimace and gives the owner his address so that they can get it delivered to the apartment sometime early tomorrow—hopefully while Donghyuck’s out, so he’ll be surprised.

Jeno, surprisingly having matured into somewhat of a gentleman, opts to walk Mark home like he’s a stuttering fresh-faced prom date. It’s cold outside, but Mark’s preoccupied by the satisfaction (um, kind of) of his latest purchase.

“Not that I’m not jazzed at hanging out with you,” Jeno starts, when the round the bend and Mark can see his apartment building, “but why’d you call me out now?” His eyes are searching, serious but not judgmental. “We’ve been in the same city all our lives, Mark.”

Mark winces. “I don’t know what to say,” he says, and it’s true. He doesn’t. How is he supposed to explain that he had planned on leaving Jeno behind all those years ago when he’d gone to college, reminder of all the things that he’d felt that he had to get rid of? Jeno, link to his childhood, a half-step away from Donghyuck, who had _left_ , and Mark had thought that he couldn’t bear to be abandoned once again and so he had taken the initiative, unasked. That _this,_ here, was the unintentional exception.

But it wasn’t just that, really. To maintain a friendship, he thought, even the lifelong sort, was hard goddamn work. It was all _I’m busy now, but I’ll call you tomorrow,_ and _you’re meeting up with seniors from your department on Saturday? Oh, then maybe we’ll meet up some other time_. And Mark’s never been cut out for that kind of effort, that kind of tenacity. Years ago, he clutched the fabric of his childhood in his hands and found a loose thread and _pulled_ , and with it the whole thing unraveled, a deliberate undoing of his making. Tangled skeins of yarn at his feet—discarded—his fragile ego caught on tenterhooks.

For someone who spends so much of his life overanalyzing every aspect of his existence, there are countless basic questions that Mark doesn’t think he’ll ever fully be able to answer.

“Don’t be a stranger again,” Jeno says, after a while, and then turns to look up at the sky, hands shoved into his pockets. He’s not pushing Mark for an answer; giving him the benefit of an easy way out. The air is crisp, the sky an endless stretch of rolling clouds pockmarked by a lofty skyline.

“I won’t,” Mark says, throat suspiciously tight. He wants to promise but can’t squeeze out the words. He’s well-versed in the art of disappointing those around him. It’s just… for once in is life, he wants, desperately, to actually follow through. Reliability has never been his defining characteristic, but maybe with time it’ll be something he can cultivate in himself.

When Jeno bids him goodbye, it’s with a careful distance between the two of them. He’s grown taller, Mark thinks, since their graduation. The image of Jeno, twenty-four-years-old, superimposed upon him at eighteen, still in his school uniform. An image that isn’t softened by the buzz of alcohol, nor by the presence of Donghyuck at his side. But Jeno’s eyes crinkle with his smile, a display of familiar sincerity—of mercy—that Mark knows he doesn’t really deserve but is grateful for all the same.

In the apartment, Donghyuck is standing over the stove, humming quietly to himself. He’s in sweatpants, and one of Mark’s old college hoodies, the hood pulled up over his head. His feet are bare against the kitchen floor.

“Smells good,” Mark comments, and goes to peer over Donghyuck’s shoulder to see what he’s making. It’s soondubu-jjigae; the kind that’s more extraneous ingredients than actual soup—and it looks amazing. Mark’s struck with a sense of homesickness—he rarely cooks proper Korean food for himself, finds it easier just to toss some vegetables and meat and stir-fry everything indiscriminately, but it’s nice to be able to come home to something so reminiscent of his childhood. 

“Obviously,” Donghyuck sniffs haughtily. “ _I’m_ the one who made it, after all.”

“Obviously,” echoes Mark, although he can’t seem to reign in his smile.

“Hang on,” Donghyuck says, and then grabs a pair of chopsticks to fish around the soup for a piece of shrimp. He picks it up, goes to lift it to Mark’s lips. “Say _ah_ ,” he teases, to which Mark dutifully opens his mouth.

But before it can even reach him it slips from between the two chopsticks and splatters, messy, onto the floor. Mark jolts back in his surprise, and Donghyuck stands there, staring with wide-eyed dismay at the ground. His hand that had been holding the chopsticks hovers in the air, slow to react, and it trembles.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Donghyuck hisses, with vitriol, but quietly as though he doesn’t mean for Mark to hear. “God _dammit_.”

“Hey,” Mark says, hesitantly, as he reaches out to cup Donghyuck’s elbow, feeling the tremors that run through him; poorly contained frustration. “It’s okay. It’s not a big deal, so don’t worry about it, I’ll clean it up.”

Donghyuck is silent for a half second, eyes unfocused even as he seems to relax, placing the chopsticks back onto the counter. “Sorry,” he says, _sotto voce_. “I made a mess.”

“And it’s no big deal,” Mark repeats. “Seriously.”

Donghyuck goes to the bathroom while Mark cleans up and sets the table. When Donghyuck returns he’s all smiling eyes and showing teeth again, clearly eager to update Mark on what he’d gotten up to during the day. He chatters away, more focused on talking rather than eating, and it’s all Mark can do to keep focused on his own damn food instead of staring starry-eyed at Donghyuck.

Halfway through his bowl of stew, Mark thinks: _isn’t this domestic_? then immediately following that a piece of tofu goes down the wrong pipe. It takes five smacks to the back (he’s definitely going to bruise) to dislodge it, and he spends the next minute wheezing and downing water to try and soothe the burn.

“Very smooth,” says Donghyuck, snickering, and Mark shoots him a baleful glare before launching a spoonful of rice at him. Things don’t dissolve into a food fight because they are _adults_ (and neither of them particularly enjoy cleaning up messes much), but Donghyuck does stick his tongue out to make a very childish face.

Even still, it’s probably the nicest day Mark’s had in a long while, and it’s a feeling he carries with him even as he and Donghyuck get ready for bed.

Maybe it should be strange, that Donghyuck’s been living with him for nearly two months and they still haven’t spoken at all about Donghyuck’s plans for the upcoming however many weeks-months-years, but Mark can’t muster up the strength to demand any real answers—he’s satisfied with the way things are. Perhaps it’s a little selfish, too, that Mark hasn’t suggested buying a second bed, but he figures that if Donghyuck were really bothered by it he wouldn’t insist upon sticking his freezing feet between Mark’s shins every night.

Donghyuck’s already huddled under the blankets by the time Mark finishes brushing his teeth, and all Mark can see of him from over the blankets are his round eyes and the wild tufts of his hair.

“It’s so cold,” says Donghyuck, except his voice is entirely muffled by the blankets so it sounds more like _itsh sho code,_ and Mark briefly but viscerally feels the urge to clutch at his heart.

“It’s not that bad,” he tries.

“My _teeth_ are chattering, Mark, it’s absolutely that bad,” retorts Donghyuck, then pulls the blankets entirely over his head. “Well? What are you waiting for? _Get in_ , space heater,” Donghyuck whines, and then reemerges to sulk at Mark, who should not be as embarrassingly endeared as he is.

“Yeah, yeah, whatever you say,” he laughs and then does exactly that, joining Donghyuck under the covers, who instantly attaches himself to Mark like a very enthusiastic octopus, burrowing the cold tip of his nose into the crook of Mark’s throat.

Even as he laughs at Donghyuck’s nearly painful grip, Mark’s throat hurts, thick and aching, overwhelmed in all that he feels in this very moment. Years without this—and he thinks, almost disbelieving: _how had I ever learned to live without this_?

~

It’s like this: Mark spent six years coming to terms with what it was like to be alone. At nineteen, a freshman in college, he learned, then, what it felt to be truly _lonely_ , even while surrounded by people. Maybe it was pathetic, that he had been nineteen years old and hadn’t the faintest clue what it was like to be away from his best friend.

Donghyuck’s presence in his life, up until that point, had been the one constant that Mark had always relied on—the one thing that he trusted more than anything, even more than himself, sometimes. Donghyuck’s quick wit, his fluting voice. His constant sarcastic commentary, his reckless smile. Donghyuck was Mark’s other half, in all the cliché ways. Without him, who was supposed to hand Mark the left earbud to a set, look at him with expectant eyes? Who was going to pull all-nighters with him while he hammered out shitty first drafts one after another? Who was going to call him an idiot and an old man for not knowing some incredibly niche pop culture reference? _Who_? 

The longest time they had ever spent apart, really, was the summer of Mark’s ninth birthday, when his parents decided to fly out to Vancouver for the entire break to visit their college friends. They didn’t actually tell him until two days before they were set to leave, to tell him to get packing, and when Mark had opened his mouth to ask for more details, they’d cut him off with a blasé note on how it would be _good for him, to immerse himself in an unfamiliar environment_.

His initial reaction, really, had been excitement. Prior to this he’d never once left Korea, and he’d always loved listening to his parents talk about their time abroad. They spoke to him sometimes in English, and it felt strange, like it was coming from a place too far for him to really wrap his head around, something out of a storybook. Canada, from what he understood, existed in the same realm as the movies he watched that were in English, that he knew were _based_ in reality but still on the fringes of it.

It took only a few minutes for the fantasy to dissolve into uncertainty, because Mark had come to the very obvious realization that a summer away from Seoul meant an entire month without Donghyuck. He’d rapidly gone pale, because this meant that he would have to _break the news,_ and he knew Donghyuck would be upset. Donghyuck had spent the last two weeks of the school term chattering away about all the things he wanted to do with Mark after the semester ended, and now that meant that none of those things would come to fruition, and Mark _hated_ letting Donghyuck down.

“I have to tell Hyuckie,” he’d said, in one breath and highly distressed, to his parents, who were already laughing at him. He didn’t quite understand _why_ they were laughing—did they want to be responsible for making Donghyuck cry? _He_ sure didn’t.

“Go on, then,” his mom told him, and ushered him to the door, where he haphazardly shoved his feet halfway into his sneakers so that he could limp-sprint next door.

Donghyuck was in his bedroom when Mark arrived—and Mrs. Lee had offered to bring them some fruit except Mark had politely declined because his stomach was roiling at the thought of Donghyuck’s reaction, which he was sure entailed some form of aggressive pouting and dramatics.

“Mark!” Donghyuck brightened when he saw Mark at the doorway. Then he wrinkled his nose. “Why are you sweaty?”

“I have to tell you something,” Mark responded earnestly, somewhat breathlessly, and then let himself get pulled to the floor where Donghyuck was sitting cross-legged in front of an armada of stuffed animals. “I’m going to Vancouver,” he said, and then held his breath to wait for the inevitable nuclear fallout.

Except… “Oh, that’s so cool!” Donghyuck enthused and clapped his hands together. He was grinning full-force, and it looked a little funny because his two front teeth had fallen out two weeks ago and the adult teeth hadn’t fully grown in yet. It made him speak in a lisp. _Thatsh sho cool!_ “You’ll finally get to see where your parents grew up! You should bring me back some Canadian snacks… like maple syrup.”

“Oh, um,” Mark smiled then, surprised and very relieved. “Sure!”

“So, when you get back let’s go to camping,” Donghyuck said, and then began poking around at one of the stuffed bears on the ground that was lopsided and missing an ear.

Mark blinked. “Hyuckie, I’m going to be gone for the entire summer.”

At that, Donghyuck froze. _Ah_ , Mark thought, dismayed. _There it is_.

He turned then, very slowly, to look at Mark, as though he were assessing whether or not Mark was actually telling the truth. His eyes were very focused, and his mouth was pressed into a thin line. His brows were beginning to furrow. Mark was prepared to run for his life.

“I didn’t know until today,” Mark said, helpless. “I’m really sorry, Hyuckie.”

Donghyuck stared at him, wordless for a second, clearly having come to the conclusion that Mark was, indeed, telling the truth. “Fine,” he said, eventually. His voice was very very stiff. “Whatever. I don’t care.”

(He clearly cared.)

Donghyuck whipped around and went abruptly silent, lips pursed, arms folding across his thin chest. It was always difficult when Donghyuck got like this, Mark knew. It was one thing when he lost his temper and started yelling—he tired himself out like that easily and it always got out of his system fast. He’d bounce back to his usual cheerful self in no time. But when he got like this—quiet, brooding—this meant that he was genuinely upset, and it would become a waiting game to see how long it would take for him to process everything on his own.

“Donghyuck-ah,” Mark tried, but Donghyuck turned resolutely away from him. “We can still hang out before I go,” he tried again, except Donghyuck turned away even further, determined to pretend as though Mark didn’t exist.

Mark’s shoulders fell, and he bit back a sigh. It was never any use trying to reason with Donghyuck whenever he got like this, so he got to his feet and dusted his pants off uncertainly. “Well, I’m leaving in two days,” he said, a little sadly, “so you know where to find me.”

He left then and walked home feeling distinctly dejected. His parents knew what Donghyuck was like, and so they were waiting for him with a bowl of cut-up watermelon on the counter.

“Things are always so big for children,” he heard his father murmur, and his mother’s muted agreement.

“Every is new to them, so any little fight must feel as though the world is ending,” she whispered back, and then they were too quiet to hear after that, when Mark took the bowl of watermelon with him upstairs to his room.

After that, he spent the next two days waiting for Donghyuck to come around, so that maybe they could go to the pool or park to hang out before he left, but it never happened. Donghyuck, if nothing else, was a _champion_ at holding grudges.

But, on the morning of his flight, when his parents were loading their bags in the trunk of the car at about seven in the morning, Mark heard the pitter-patter of two feet and the sound of Donghyuck’s voice: “ _Wait, wait!_ ”

He spun around to see Donghyuck, still dressed in his pajamas (yellow with teddy-bear print) sprinting towards Mark in his bare feet. He’d clearly just gotten out of bed, hair an absolute mess, sleep still crusted around his eyes. He was breathless and shivering in the early morning chill, and he looked near devastated to see Mark’s parents heaving bags into the car.

“I’m sorry!” Donghyuck blurted out, the moment he came to a stop before Mark.

“Why?” Mark asked, because even though he had been sad about Donghyuck ignoring him, he didn’t think he was angry enough for an apology to be warranted.

“Ma told me I was being a little jerk for getting upset and ignoring you,” Donghyuck said breathlessly, “and she’s _right_. It’s not _your_ fault you’re going to Canada, and I was real dumb for getting mad at you.” He twisted his fingers together, barely able to meet Mark’s eyes.

“I’m not angry,” Mark managed, a little dumbly.

“Yeah, but I know you were _sad_ ,” Donghyuck pointed out, and now the tips of his ears were scarlet. “And Ma said it was definitely my fault. And she’s right.”

Mark flushed. “I wasn’t _that_ sad,” he mumbled, and Donghyuck just gave him a Look. “Okay, I was. A little. But it’s alright.”

“It’s not alright!” Donghyuck insisted and reached forward to grip Mark’s hands in his own. His fingers were cold. “I was too busy being _dumb_ that I ended up wasting your last two days here,” he blubbered then, eyes becoming red-rimmed. “We could’ve still had fun in two days, but now you’re leaving and I’m too late!” He took a deep, trembling breath, before throwing his head back to wail: “And now you’re going away to Canada for the entire summer and you’re going to _forget me_!”

Stunned to silence, Mark couldn’t do much beyond staring at Donghyuck who was clearly trying his best to hold back an onslaught of tears. “I’m not going to _forget_ you,” he told Donghyuck vehemently, and drew his cold hands to his chest. Donghyuck’s fingers were red and chapped already, because he was ridiculously sensitive to anything below room temperature.

Donghyuck sniffled then, and when he blinked his lashes were wet and clumped together. “Promise?” He whispered, voice wobbling, and then withdrew one hand to drag the back of it across his nose, smearing snot all over his face. He didn’t seem to notice, still watching Mark with damp eyes.

“Promise,” Mark said, as serious as anything. “You’re my best friend. I’ll call your house every day, so much that your mom is gonna be sick of it.”

“I’ll call you too,” Donghyuck told him, “and you have to tell me everything about Canada, and you have to bring me back gifts, and you can’t make a new best friend, okay?”

“Obviously I won’t,” Mark said, because Donghyuck was the most perfect best friend in the world, and Donghyuck flung himself at Mark then, wrapping his skinny arms around Mark’s waist and burying his snot-covered face into Mark’s shoulder. He was very small, and the material of his pajamas were the softest thing Mark had ever felt.

He was relieved, then, that he wasn’t going to have to leave while Donghyuck was still upset at him, and also a little sad that they’d squandered the last two days they could have spent together.

When they pulled apart, Donghyuck grabbed Mark’s face in his hands and lurched forward to press his lips to Mark’s forehead. His mouth was dry and chapped and soft, except he’d done it with enough force to nearly knock Mark’s head all the way back. “For the trip,” Donghyuck explained fervently, and Mark felt all sticky and warm inside.

Even though it was only a month, that summer was the first taste Mark would have of what it was like to spend time away from his best friend, and it was an experience that he recalled often when he’d first gone to college, and Donghyuck had been in the States.

One month apart had been nothing compared to six years, and Mark sometimes spent nights lying awake thinking about how he had felt as though it was the end of the world to be away from Donghyuck for a mere thirty days. They were codependent, maybe, and he recalled the nights in Vancouver he had spent crouched in the corner behind the couch in the early hours of the morning whispering to Donghyuck. His parents’ phone bills had been through the roof that month, but they’d been more understanding than he deserved, maybe, and the month had passed by in a blink of an eye.

Or maybe it had dragged, too—felt like a lifetime for nine-year-old Mark Lee—except the years had softened and blurred all the jagged edges until it, too, became a glass bead of a memory worn smooth with time.

Six years as an adult was monumental but at the same time it was nothing at all. The older he got the faster the years flew by, bleeding grey days. _Blink and you’ll miss it._ Mark adapted to the monotony of adulthood remarkably well, except he often lamented how many of those days-weeks-months he had spent feeling inexplicably despondent. Wake up, go to class, come home, sleep. Wake up, go to work, come home, sleep. Rinse and repeat. What did Mark have to show for his own life?

When he was twenty-one years old—a junior—he took a Philosophy course to fulfill a general education requirement. It was the only class that still had seats, and he figured it would be an easy A. He doesn’t remember any of it now, really, having spent most of the semester drowsing in the back row. Except for one thing. One day a girl had asked the professor: _how do we know that our lives have meaning_?

And the professor had responded: _well, we don’t_ know _anything for sure, but it certainly depends on which philosophical perspective you personally prescribe to. An existentialist, for instance—and you’ll recall that this school of thought is a humanist one—might very well respond to the nihilist belief that life has no intrinsic meaning by saying that you are a radical agent of free will who has the capacity to attribute whatever value you so wish to an inherently meaningless world._

_On the other hand, an absurdist might say that any and all attempts to find meaning in life is impossible. However, in doing so we must therefore embrace the absurd—which is this contradictory search for value in a valueless world—and learn to exist with this perpetual emptiness. One might even go as far to say that it is the search for meaning itself that’s meaningful. So, really if we’re looking at historical philosophical discussions about the ‘meaning of life’, it’s all very confusing, and I wouldn’t be able to give you a straight answer. Such is the burden of philosophy._

_However, if I were to answer this, truthfully, based off personal experience and instinct, I would say that perhaps the kindest thing we can do for ourselves would be to find purpose or value in whatever area of life we can, no matter how insignificant, if only to make our existence just a little more bearable. I have a cat at home, you see. At times I find that I live for her, that she is what I feel gives my life purpose, what makes it worth waking up every morning for. And that’s okay. You look at the little things. You learn, you live, and maybe you love, you keep going on._

Mark thinks about it, sometimes. Wonders why anyone would dedicate their life to contemplating the terrifying vastness of what it means to be alive, only to die at the end of it all. It seems ironic, almost. ( _How big is the universe? A fatal fall off the edge of existence._ )

He thinks about the little things, the things that he keeps close to his chest.

His piece-of-shit coffee machine. His pocket-sized balcony that overlooks the residential street. Doyoung’s weekly check-ins. The sweatshirt he’s had since his sophomore year of high school. Donghyuck’s smile. The sound of Donghyuck humming under his breath. The drift of his fingers across Mark’s hip when the night is silent and still and moonlight spills, liquid-pale, through slated blinds. The words he keeps tucked beneath his tongue, a voice he can’t quite find. Day after day after day. Once again, another time.

~

The piano arrives.

It’s early afternoon, and Donghyuck is out. Mark directs the movers, tells them to place it against the wall that segues into the hallway leading towards his bedroom. In order for it to fit, he has to move his TV and its stand off-center, and even then, it’s a near thing.

“You must really like music, huh,” asks one of the workers, grinning as Mark struggles to squeeze everything together to fit against one wall.

“Something like that,” he huffs, winded, and then makes sure to tip them for their help.

As Mark examines the scene critically with his hands propped on his hips—and despite the fact that his living room is definitely too small to comfortably house a full-sized upright piano—he thinks that it looks _right_. Like it belongs.

After getting that settled, he spends the rest of the afternoon on his laptop, working on a chapter-by-chapter outline of his upcoming novel. He’s supposed to go to the office the following month for a workshop with Doyoung, and for once in his life he actually has some degree of motivation to get the jump on his tasks.

He’s so engrossed, in fact, that he doesn’t even notice when Donghyuck gets home.

It isn’t until he hears the clatter of Donghyuck at the entryway and a cheery, “I’m home and I’m _starving_ ,” that he startles and nearly flings his laptop clear across the room.

Mark staggers to his feet then, dusting his greasy Cheeto-dust-fingers on his sweatpants (okay, so he got peckish, sue him), and waits anxiously for Donghyuck’s reaction.

Donghyuck doesn’t notice at first, head tilted down as he fusses with the buttons of his coat. His nose and ears are red from the cold, and his scarf is trailing behind him, so lopsided on side of it nearly drags along the floor.

“Hyuck,” Mark says, mouth suddenly dry.

“Hm?” Donghyuck hums, noncommittal. “What’s up?”

Mark is silent. Waits for Donghyuck to look up, to see for himself. It doesn’t take long.

Donghyuck huffs, begins to speak, “ _What_ —” when his gaze falls square on the piano, and he goes abruptly silent, even as his jaw drops. He stands there, absolutely dumbfounded, and his fingers fall from where they’d been unbuttoning his coat. He hasn’t blinked in several drawn-out beats. Mark isn’t even sure that he’s _breathing_.

His mouth snaps closed, jaw working as he stares at the instrument. Mark’s heart is racing, palms uncomfortably clammy already.

“Surprise?” He says weakly and attempts some admittedly very lackluster jazz hands.

It’s as if Donghyuck hadn’t heard him at all. His expression has shuttered into something entirely unreadable, stony. A slate wiped clean. It’s unsettling—Mark has never lain witness to a Donghyuck so good at concealing his feelings. For once in his life, he’s unsure of how Donghyuck’s going to react, has no idea what he’s thinking. It’s an uncomfortable feeling, the nausea that comes after eating too much grease, film in his mouth and throat and his stomach roiling.

Another breathless moment. It feels like an eternity.

Donghyuck drops his bag on the coffee table, and then sweeps out of the living room without a word.

Mark’s… well, he’s stupefied; stunned to complete and utter slack-jawed silence. Of all the scenarios he’d imagined, a complete _non-reaction_ hadn’t even been in the realm of possibility. He sits down heavy, utterly mystified as he falls back into the couch.

He’s not sure what the protocol is now—is he supposed to follow Donghyuck? Demand answers? He doesn’t really feel like doing that, and he figures that if Donghyuck had gone so far as to physically remove himself from the room, then maybe he really does just want a few minutes alone.

Mark resolves to give him five minutes to gather his thoughts before following him, where presumably he’s holed himself up in Mark’s (well, theirs, now) bedroom. Well, it’s not like he has that many options—not unless he physically climbs out of Mark’s window and manages to shimmy down from the balcony, but he figures that that won’t happen.

Nerves thrum beneath his skin; he gets to his feet to pace around the room. He comes to a stop before the piano. It’s an old piece, brown unlike the sleek black instrument of their childhood, and the keys are yellowing with age. Mark’s apartment is fairly minimalist—not out of intention but rather laziness—and the piano gives the place some sort of character that it’s never had before. 

He doesn’t think it’s a bad gift, really. Maybe Donghyuck’s upset at the quality of it? But Donghyuck’s also never been the indisputably bratty sort—sure, being somewhat annoying is definitely his brand, but when it _really_ matters, he’s always been one of the most genuine people Mark knows. The sort of kid who would’ve cheered for a wrapped-up apple on his birthday.

Steeling himself, Mark makes his way to the bedroom, where upon entering, goosebumps immediately rise on his arms. The window is pushed open, and he sees Donghyuck on the balcony, leaning against the railing, a white-knuckled grip around the metal handrail. He doesn’t seem to notice that the temperature is near freezing, nor does he react to Mark’s presence.

Donghyuck’s shivering all over, even his hands, which seem to be trying their best to hold steady. Whether it’s because of the cold or something else, Mark isn’t sure. This uncertainty, he thinks, is the absolute _worst_.

Mark doesn’t speak as he slides a leg through the window, gripping the frame with a hand as he steps out onto the tiny veranda. Donghyuck doesn’t look at him, gaze instead focused on his own shaking hands, and Mark is wordless as he moves to stand beside him. Unlike Donghyuck, Mark’s only wearing a thin shirt, and the cold is a biting, near-bruising force, chill sinking deep into his bones.

“If you hate it,” Mark begins awkwardly, “I could always return it.” (He’s actually not sure if he _could_ , but really, as long as it’ll get them past this discomfort.)

Donghyuck’s shaking intensifies. “I don’t hate it,” he says quietly, and his voice is thin and brittle. Crystal shards of glass.

“Oh, um.” Mark doesn’t know what to say. He’s grasping at straws, floundering in the depths of an unknowable sea.

Donghyuck turns to him, then. His eyes are very, very dark. He seems to be at odds with himself, some sort of inner turmoil that Mark isn’t privy to. He’s never been as impenetrable as he is at this moment.

Silently, Donghyuck raises a hand and cups Mark’s face, thumb brushing along his cheekbone. A gentle, cautious touch. Mark can’t _breathe_. Every bit of him feels tense, some sort of strange duress that he can’t place, and he’s as still as can be, petrified into immobility. Donghyuck blinks, his stare a heady thing, heavy-lidded. Hazy. His hand drifts lower, pad of his thumb catching the swell of Mark’s lower lip.

His gaze drops. Follows the line of his own thumb, the curious press of it against Mark’s mouth. Mark’s heart is in his throat, hummingbird quick, a flutter of a staggering pulse. Donghyuck’s eyes flick upwards, meets Mark’s own wide-eyed stare. One breath. Another. _A lifetime and then some._ He leans in. A hairsbreadth away. Half a beat, the heat of his gentle sigh fanning itself across Mark’s lips.

And when he kisses Mark, it’s the easiest goddamn thing in the world.

His hand—on Mark’s cheek—is so, so cold.

The earth shudders, tilts on its axis. A sudden standstill followed by the irrevocability of the one thing that, maybe, was unavoidable. The slick slide of Donghyuck’s mouth against his, the desperate twist of his fingers in the back of Mark’s shirt. His trembling; in the cradle of his ribs, his heart an offering. His wet lashes, his freezing touch. The drag of his fingers through the tapestry of Mark’s soul. _One tug and it all unravels_.

It begins this way, the culmination of years of everything and then years of nothing. Donghyuck, the cold tip of his nose against Mark’s cheekbone. A glass filled to excess, the ocean’s attempt to pour itself into a single cup. Mark is bursting at the seams, shaking apart. Shot through with lightning.

He cups Donghyuck’s face in his own hands, feels the way Donghyuck reacts to the touch, the downy hairs at the nape of his neck standing on end. Whatever his internal monologue is attempting to tell him, Mark ignores it all in favor of deepening the kiss, leaning in, pressing Donghyuck up against the railing. Donghyuck is a solid, sure presence. The only thing in the world Mark has ever wanted so badly.

Donghyuck makes a soft, wanting noise against Mark’s mouth, and his fingers slide up the back of Mark’s shirt. Mark shudders. Leans into the touch. Pours the fragmented remnants of his soul into the space between their breaths.

It’s another few moments before Donghyuck draws back, whispers a breathless, “ _Mark_ ,” and then kisses him once more, this time softer, close-mouthed.

They break apart—such is the inconvenience of being alive, to have to breathe—and Mark looks at Donghyuck, sees the flush that’s spread across the high points of his cheekbones and the cut of his collarbone. He’s red all over, from external cold and internal flush all at once, and Mark looks and _looks_ at him, the ache of adoration settling deep in the recesses of his throat and chest.

Donghyuck is smiling now, a lopsided little thing. His lips are ruby, spit slick.

“What was that for?” Mark asks, wonderingly, and then touches the mole on the column of Donghyuck’s throat, just because he can.

“Thank you,” Donghyuck says, and his smile softens, looking at Mark with his downturned eyes and heart-shaped mouth. “The piano is perfect.” He retreats, then, and glances away, towards the street. There’s no indication that he feels the cold at all, even though at this point both Mark’s fingers and his ears have all gone entirely numb.

“But…?” He hedges, sensing that there’s more left to be said.

Donghyuck is quiet for a moment. “There is no but,” he says, eventually, and then leans forward to rest his forearms on the railing. He props his chin up on the palm of his hand and tilts his head to look Mark in the eye, peering up at him from beneath the dark fringe of his lashes. “It was just overwhelming, a little.”

“Overwhelming?”

“Mark,” Donghyuck breathes in deep. “I haven’t seriously played in months.” He turns away then, expression considering as he studies the street beneath them.

“Oh,” says Mark, and blinks. “Why haven’t you?”

“Lots of reasons,” Donghyuck hums, but doesn’t elaborate.

When he straightens and faces Mark, his eyes are shining. “To see you go so far as to buy an entire _piano_ … You’re unbelievable.”

“Uh, it’s no big deal?” Mark tries. This is a lie. It’s a _very_ big deal.

Donghyuck smiles, eyes clear and bright. He knows it’s a lie. Knows it because to him Mark is still an open book. And, like so, it’s reciprocal, a two-way street—he cuts open the harbor of his chest, offers Mark a glimpse into his swaying rowboat heart.

He says: “I’m in love with you, you know?”

Mark makes a noise resembling a dying whale. His heart falters and stalls right then and there. All he can do is gape at Donghyuck’s smiling face. All of Mark’s defenses, shattered indiscriminately.

Mark doesn’t say the words back. Doesn’t have a chance to, really. While he’s still in the midst of attempting to process the implications, Donghyuck takes his hands and pulls him back inside, makes the uncomfortable climb indoors with his fingers curled tight around Mark’s wrist.

“You’ll catch a cold wearing so little, idiot,” Donghyuck tuts, already in mother-hen mode as though the past five minutes hadn’t happened at all, like he hadn’t made some sort of grand declaration of love after a heartrending kiss.

“So,” Mark starts, but dutifully lets himself get pulled down to the bed so that Donghyuck can wrap a quilt around him. Donghyuck’s ears are very red. His hands shake nearly imperceptibly as he tugs the corners of the quilt close, presses them firm to Mark’s sternum. “Are we gonna talk?” Mark asks, as Donghyuck fusses.

“Sure,” says Donghyuck, “let’s talk.” He pauses. “Can we build a blanket fort first, though?”

“Uh.”

“Well?” Donghyuck looks at him expectantly then, eyebrows raised.

Mark shrugs helplessly. “I mean, why not?” As always, subject to Donghyuck’s whims. “Sounds like it could be fun.”

And build a blanket fort they do.

They carry armfuls of blankets and pillows out to the living room, and it takes Mark back to their childhood, before blanket forts became ‘too immature’ and they stopped, somewhere in the midst of their ascent from middle to high school. Little things about adolescence that they left behind for no reason other than some prescribed notion of maturity. The process of technicolor film bleeding into sepia. The shedding of feathers, winged creatures dragged down into the overwhelming gravity of the earth.

Mark still knows how best to build a fort, with the couch and additional chairs for support. Donghyuck does too, if the way he’s arranging the pillows inside are of any indication.

He firmly quashes the voice of doubt that rears its ugly head, whispers: _maybe Donghyuck could see how nuts you are for him, maybe that kiss was out of pity, and this now is an act of mercy, to let you down easy._ Objectively, Mark is well aware that Donghyuck’s never been the sort for manipulation, always preferring the more straightforward route. If Donghyuck hadn’t wanted to kiss him, he wouldn’t have.

But insecurity is a funny thing, that way. It rarely accounts for known realities.

“If you finish setting up, I’ll go grab some snacks,” Donghyuck chirps, and Mark wonders if he’s imagining the way Donghyuck is avoiding meeting his eyes.

Mark doesn’t protest, just hums in acquiescence and continues.

He’s twenty-five years old and sitting on the floor and building a blanket fort, he thinks, and almost laughs. It’s nostalgic, really. He isn’t exactly sure when the last time he’d built a blanket fort had been. Probably when he was about fifteen. Why had he stopped doing all the things that made life enjoyable?

In the kitchen there’s the quiet shuffling of Donghyuck trawling through cabinets, and the sound of the microwave turning on. Popcorn, then.

Mark thinks back to the kiss, thinks about the twist of Donghyuck’s hands in his shirt. He wants to do it again, wants to feel Donghyuck tangling his fingers in Mark’s hair, wants to hear him muffle those soft, sweet sounds against Mark’s mouth. Donghyuck, who’s loud and beautiful and probably the best thing to walk back into Mark’s life, who kisses as though his life depends on it—the heady, fraught sensation of it all.

The thing is that this isn’t even the first time they’ve kissed. No, that label belongs to the Mark and Donghyuck of about twelve years ago, at the first ever boy-girl party they’d ever attended.

In all honesty, it was Donghyuck who had been invited, not Mark. At age thirteen, Mark was just in the throes of his awkward stage—braces, glasses, with a sort of stroppy gait that came from gangly limbs that had grown too fast for him to get used to. Donghyuck, on the other hand, never seemed to suffer through puberty the way Mark did. He glided through it: one day a cute kid, the next a pretty-faced young adult. Mark, on the other hand, sort of staggered his way through, tripping over his own two feet and weathering all the consequences of a constantly cracking voice.

Anyways. Donghyuck had been the one to insist that Mark go with him to the party, even though it was clear that Donghyuck was the one that people wanted to see. It wasn’t that Donghyuck was popular amongst girls for being a heartthrob or whatever it was that middle school girls liked—it was just that he was a genuinely affable person, more the class clown than anything else, and everyone liked being around Lee Donghyuck, even if it meant that he would inevitably bring along his shadow that people barely knew anything about, Mark Lee.

As was typical of most middle school gatherings, the party soon devolved into a game of Seven Minutes in Heaven.

Mark was paired off with someone the same time Donghyuck was, and he’d found himself locked in a room with a cute but rather quiet girl named Yui, who was an exchange student from Japan.

“I’m sorry,” Mark had said to her, so embarrassed that he could physically feel his blush. “I know this is weird.”

She’d giggled then, and then got on her tiptoes to press a sweet kiss to the corner of his mouth. It was his first kiss. She was wearing lip-gloss, sugary and sticky, and it left a glittery film over his lips. “It’s okay,” she had said to him, pink-cheeked and smiling. “You’re cute,” she told him, and then they had spent the rest of the seven minutes talking about her feelings about switching schools in the middle of the year, that taught in a language she didn’t speak. By the end of it they had become friends—a friendship that lasted until she moved away again at the end of the year.

When they’d emerged from the room, Donghyuck and his partner had already finished, and he was grinning when he saw Mark.

They left the living room then, because it was dark out and Donghyuck said he wanted to see the stars.

“That was fun,” Donghyuck said. “Seven Minutes in Heaven is such a scam.”

“Did she kiss you?” Mark asked, curious. He knew that Donghyuck had never been kissed before.

“Obviously not,” Donghyuck snorted. “No one _really_ does anything during the game.”

“Huh,” said Mark.

“Why, did you two kiss?” It was then that Donghyuck turned to him, all of a sudden seeming very focused.

“She kissed me,” Mark said, and then went pink. “Like, a peck? Barely anything. Not a big deal.” He was beginning to ramble, but that was because Mark was thinking about Yui’s sticky-sweet lip-gloss and the way her eyes crinkled when she smiled.

“Not a big deal?” Donghyuck stared at him for a moment. “It was your first kiss, though.” For some reason, he sounded dismayed. Mark figured that he was jealous, maybe, that Mark had gotten a kiss before he had, even though Donghyuck was more popular.

“Yeah,” said Mark, and went to rub the back of his neck. He felt jittery, like his skin was too tight for everything that was inside of him.

It was then that Donghyuck seemed to come to a decision, brows furrowed, eyes scrunched shut as he lurched forward to fling his arms around Mark’s neck, sticking his face right up close—and it was an objectively terrible kiss, even with Mark’s exceedingly narrow frame of reference—all teeth and bruising force. More impact that anything nice, and Mark groaned in pain when Donghyuck smacked straight into his nose. It ended before it really started, and Donghyuck withdrew to scowl down at the floor. His hands were clenched into fists at his sides.

“There,” he muttered. “Since it’s no big deal. That’s my first kiss.”

And Mark was confused—although he was mostly just busy nursing his nose which _freaking hurt_ —so he ended up standing there, stock-still, staring at Donghyuck. His eyes were watering because of his nose, which already felt tender and over-warm to the touch.

“What?” Donghyuck snapped, when he noticed Mark staring. His face was red. “It’s not _fair_ that you had your first kiss before me. Plus, you said it wasn’t a big deal. So _there_.” He avoided Mark’s face resolutely and began to march forward. “Well? What are you waiting for? Let’s go back to my house so I can kick your ass at Mario Cart.”

And that was that, really. Mark’s second ever kiss (that is, if one played the definition of a kiss fast and loose), and Donghyuck’s first. There had been an unspoken agreement to never bring it up again after that, and so neither of them did.

Mark smiles, then, at the memory.

“Ta-da!” Donghyuck’s voice startles him out of his thoughts—he’s holding a bowl of popcorn which is a little under-popped but still smells amazing, and two cans of beer. “Perfect meal for two adults,” Donghyuck says, and grins, all teeth.

“Incredible,” Mark deadpans, accepting the bowl and a can. “How gourmet. You’ve truly outdone yourself this time.”

Donghyuck laughs, and gently nudges Mark’s shoulder with a knee as he hunches down and enters the fort. “This would be perfect if we had string lights,” he comments, as he rearranges himself into a more comfortable position, stretched out and languid.

“Unfortunately, I don’t have the interior design sense of a teenaged girl,” Mark drawls, “or Na Jaemin.”

“That’s because you’re a boring old man.”

Mark smiles then, reaching forward to flick Donghyuck’s ankle, the only thing in his reach. “Whatever you say, Hyuck.”

It takes a few more moments for Mark to crawl in after him, settling so that his position mirrors Donghyuck’s—bodies curved towards one another in the shape of parentheses. It feels safe, squirreled away here in the dark grotto of their fort, surrounded by cushions. Donghyuck’s hair falls into his eyes, caramel brown with overgrown roots. He’s pretty and soft in the shadows, and he looks at Mark with an aching, flayed open honesty.

Unable to help himself, Mark reaches forward to cup Donghyuck’s face. He places his thumb over the mole on his cheek, beside his nose. Traces its path to the rest—a constellation on his cheek. Donghyuck makes a quiet, pleased noise and leans into the touch, nuzzling Mark’s hand like a pleased cat.

“You know I didn’t get a chance to say it earlier,” Mark murmurs, feels terrified but as sure as he’s ever been about anything in his life. “I’m in love with you too.”

Donghyuck looks at him—dark, shrewd eyes. “I know,” he says, and then turns to press his lips to Mark’s palm. His eyelashes flutter, casting shadows on his cheeks. His eyes closed, and he seems utterly content.

“You _knew_?”

“You’re not exactly the paragon of subtlety,” he points out, and laughs, sound stifled against Mark’s skin. “But, well. Maybe it was less knowing and more _hoping_ , I guess.”

Mark isn’t sure how to react—feels disbelieving laughter bubble in his chest. “How long?” He asks.

“How long have I suspected your feelings for me?” Donghyuck clarifies, eyes blinking open. Mark nods. “Figured it out almost as soon as I moved in,” Donghyuck admits. “You’re not subtle about the way you pet my hair and stare at me when you think I’m asleep.”

Mark flushes. He’d assumed that he’d done well enough at concealing his feelings, but maybe the time they’ve spent apart have only been a lesson in the deterioration of his ability to suppress all the weakest parts of himself. But he’s also a little surprised that Donghyuck hadn’t suspected anything back when they were kids—before Mark even tried to restrain his open longing. “And, um… the thing you said, about, um, hoping?”

Donghyuck moves his own hand, places it against Mark’s chest. His ears are pink. “I’ve been a lost cause ever since you told that one asshole to stop bothering me in the sandbox and got punched for your efforts, you know? And we both ended up crying because you got a nosebleed and I thought you were gonna die. And when I begged you not to die on me you said: _better me than you._ From that moment on? Five-year-old Mark Lee had my heart in a chokehold, and you’ve had it ever since.”

And Mark doesn’t even remember that at all—only has a brief hazy snapshot of the hot drip of blood into sand and a sense that he was pathetic—but as he looks at Donghyuck, Donghyuck’s eyes are shining and he’s smiling so, so wide.

“That long?” He whispers, near reverent.

“Yeah,” Donghyuck nods. “I mean, I didn’t really figure it out until that one party we went to—you know the one where you had your first kiss and I nearly broke your nose giving you a second? God, I was _so_ jealous of that cute little Yui I wanted to pull her pigtails out.”

Mark lets out a bark of laughter. “ _That’s_ what that was about? I just thought you were just mad that I got kissed before you.”

Donghyuck huffs. “Well, that too. I’m a competitive person, okay?”

It’s simple, then, for Mark to lean in, pausing just before his lips brush Donghyuck’s. “Can I?” He murmurs, against Donghyuck’s mouth, and he sees the way Donghyuck’s eyes form crescents, already moving to close the distance.

Kissing Donghyuck should feel strange but it isn’t—not really. It’s easy, almost familiar, and Donghyuck is as gentle with Mark as can be. A far cry from their very first attempt all those years ago. He tastes of beer and butter, a combination that should be off-putting but is far from it, and the slide of his tongue over Mark’s teeth makes him shiver from head to toe.

He thinks, _god, we could have had this ages ago_. And then, _but this is good, too. So good._

It’s like a dream, the weeks that follow. Their routine stays pretty much the same, except in the morning Mark wakes up to the sleep-rumpled face of Donghyuck and actually has explicit permission to kiss him, to press his lips to the crown of his head and breathe him in—strawberry shampoo, Mark’s oldest association to home.

Sometimes he spends minutes just looking at Donghyuck, still in some strange haze of disbelief.

(“I can feel you staring, Mark. Stare any harder and you’ll burn holes straight through me.”

“Sorry, just a little in my head.”

“Oh, that’s not good, it’s so _empty_ in there— _ah_! Not the face, not the face, these are precious goods you’re threatening!)

What do you do when something like this happens—when the impossible becomes reality? Mark has loved Donghyuck for all his life, in the tender moments in between years; when they were gap-toothed and still believed in Santa Claus, then middle schoolers with scraped up knees and first kisses made of knocking teeth with the canopy of the night sky arching over them. Then they were sixteen and fifteen and Donghyuck was performing his first solo recital and Mark sat through it all aching, wanting, proud and jealous and overcome.

Then they were nineteen and eighteen and about to graduate and Donghyuck was throwing pebbles at Mark’s window until he opened it up to tell him to shut the fuck up. Then the night before graduation when Donghyuck broke into his dad’s car so that they could drive to the very top of a hill an hour away, and Donghyuck rolled the windows down to scream into the wind and Mark laughed and laughed and laughed.

And then they were twenty-five and twenty-four, and Donghyuck was standing outside Mark’s door the first time they’d even been in the same country in _six years_ and Mark was still so fucking gone—easy as hell, stepping to the side and inviting him back in.

Fitting puzzle pieces, the notches of Donghyuck’s spine curved into Mark’s abdomen. The downy hairs at the nape of his neck feathering against Mark’s nose. Watching movies on the couch, Donghyuck tucking his ice-block feet underneath Mark’s thighs. Going to bed with Donghyuck in his arms and waking up to a bed long since cold but with the sound of the television on in the living room, Donghyuck humming in the kitchen.

It’s a dream within a dream, the only thing Mark has ever wanted, the one thing he never thought he’d have.

He holds Donghyuck’s face in his hands, pours his soundless words into the part of his lips, digs his fingers into the narrow jut of his hips. Familiarity turned infatuation turned love—and it’s all the same, isn’t it—a million versions of them stamped into now, and Mark grips it all with hands that have yet to forget their solitary longing.

But—proven time and time again; pattern of paths well-worn in history—good things are rarely meant to last. The transience of being. Finite beauty. Mark thinks that within each person is a well, and in that well is something like a leak. You start off with a fixed supply of all things good, be it luck, happiness, love. It drains and drains and drains and if you’re lucky it doesn’t run out before you’re out of time, but most often, he thinks, it bleeds you dry. The well in him, he imagines, has always been near-empty. Cracked open. Broken from the start.

Yes, it’s like a dream, but the funny thing about dreams is that they always, _always_ come to an end. Every day, without fail—the same inexorable conclusion. You dream; you wake. Eyes open, pale expanse of the ceiling above. Fingers still outstretched for the echo of a fantasy already fading. The last lines of the poem copied into his middle school workbook that reads:

_So dawn goes down to day._

_Nothing gold can stay._


	2. we were made then unmade

This is the day that marks the beginning of the end, thinks Mark, months later, when he’s alone in the bathroom and staring at twin toothbrushes at his sink. ( _Pink for him, orange for Donghyuck_.)

It starts off as any other day does.

Donghyuck wakes up before Mark but waits so that they can have breakfast together. (This time it’s leftovers; reheated pizza). Mark stays at the apartment to write while Donghyuck goes out to do whatever it is that he does during the days. Mark isn’t too concerned, just wishes him a good day, half-asleep and yawning still, and Donghyuck presses a barely-there kiss against the corner of his mouth before bidding him goodbye. Afterwards, Mark spends the day chained to his laptop, demolishing six cups of coffee before noon.

Really, there’s nothing out of the ordinary. It isn’t until three p.m. that their routine makes its first turn into unchartered territory.

It starts with the ringing of Mark’s phone—Donghyuck.

“Hey, what’s up?” Mark asks after accepting the call, only half-paying attention as he deliberates whether he should use the word ‘bizarre’ or ‘strange’. He decides on ‘outlandish’.

“Um, funny story,” says Donghyuck, slow, like he isn’t quite sure how to start. He sounds somewhat frazzled, and his voice is far away. “I, um. So… I maybe fractured my ankle?”

“ _What_?”

“It’s no big deal,” Donghyuck hurries to assure him, “I just slipped and landed badly, and a nice lady ended up helping me to the ER. But could you come get me? I’m not sure I could hobble back on my own even on crutches.”

“Yeah, yeah, of course,” Mark says, and even though Donghyuck had just reassured him he still finds himself thrumming with nerves—the sort of adrenaline rush that inevitably hits when someone you care about tells you that they got hurt while away from you. “Text me the address and I’ll be there soon as I can.”

Donghyuck texts him the street and building name and his room number: 305. It’s then that Mark curses the fact that he’d never gotten around to buying a car—he really hasn’t made many proper adult investments—so instead he ends up having to hail a cab. The hospital Donghyuck’s at is only a fifteen-minute drive away, which is a relief.

He spends the entirety of the drive tapping his fingers anxiously on his leg, to the point where the cab driver squints at him through the rearview mirror and asks him if he feels like throwing up. The answer is no, much to the driver’s visible relief.

The hospital is surprisingly quiet—a far cry from Mark’s general impression of what hospitals should be like—and when he asks the woman at the front desk where room 305 is, all she says is: “Are you Mark Lee?” and of course he is, so she lets him through after he shows her his ID, directing him to the third floor and down the right.

Although the hospital is quiet, it’s nowhere near empty. The fluorescent lights are somewhat headache inducing, the kind that makes it difficult to fully open his eyes. He _hates_ hospitals. Can’t stand them. The smell of disinfectant permeates every nook and cranny—and if something could smell sharp, this is what it would be.

When he gets to room 305, the door is closed. Through the window he can see Donghyuck sitting on the hospital bed alone, swinging his feet (one of which is already in a giant boot) and looking out the window. Seeing him there, seemingly all in one piece beyond the cast, Mark feels himself physically deflate with relief.

He knocks, then, and Donghyuck whips around, breaking into a wide grin once he sees Mark. _Hey baby_ , Mark sees him mouth through the glass, before he pushes the door open.

“Hey, how’s the ankle feeling?” Mark asks, making a beeline to Donghyuck, who opens his arms and makes grabby hands. He lets himself get drawn into the circle of Donghyuck’s embrace, as he buries his face into Mark’s chest. He stays there for a moment, unmoving, before tilting his head back so that the sharp point of his chin rests squarely on Mark’s sternum.

“Not too bad, all things considered,” he says, and then puckers his lips in invitation. Mark can’t help but laugh, endeared, as he leans down and meets Donghyuck halfway.

Donghyuck is pliant and warm beneath him, the taste of him already familiar. They haven’t put a label on whatever it is that they’ve been doing for the past few weeks, but Mark doesn’t think that there’s any rush. They’ve both already dropped the L-bomb anyways—because they’ve done most things out of order—but it works for them, so it’s fine.

Later, he sits down beside Donghyuck, rubbing his back and eyeing the boot. “Do you think there’s space for me to sign it?” He asks, and Donghyuck laughs.

“You can do whatever you want to it.”

“I’m holding you to that promise.”

Donghyuck throws his head back and laughs.

“Hey,” says Mark, finally noticing that they’re the only two in the room. “Where’s your doctor?”

“She’s gone to print out some forms,” Donghyuck hums. “She’ll be back in a few minutes and there are some other odds and ends to deal with and then I’m good to go.”

“Then do you mind if I go get something to drink from the cafeteria?”

“Go ahead,” Donghyuck says, patting Mark’s thigh. “Can you grab me an iced vanilla latte?”

“Sure thing,” Mark says, and gets to his feet, dusting off his pants. “Don’t break your other ankle before I have the chance to get back.”

Donghyuck snorts. “No promises,” then reaches forward to tap Mark’s ass fondly.

The cafeteria is mostly empty when Mark arrives—it’s an awkward time, not yet dinner, and the only people there are tired-looking staff. He spends some time perusing the dessert displays before deciding against it, and just buys two canned vanilla lattes, the brand that Donghyuck likes.

He’s humming under his breath—some sort of teenybopper song that Donghyuck’s been playing on repeat—as he walks back to room 305.

The door’s cracked open when he arrives, and from the sound if it, the doctor’s returned.

Mark pauses, suddenly unsure of whether or not he should go in. He can hear the tail end of the doctor’s sentence: “… not sure of its efficacy…” her voice too low to fully hear, “up the dosage of alpra…” an incomplete word, too quiet, “or thinking about… switch to,” the beginning of the next word is muffled but Mark hears the end: “…zepam.”

Donghyuck’s response is even softer, totally inaudible.

It’s strange—it doesn’t seem to be talk about Donghyuck’s ankle—or maybe Mark’s just not well-versed in the appropriate jargon, but something in the pit of his stomach tells him that it’s something else entirely. Just as Mark’s about to knock to enter, he hears the doctor’s voice, clearer than before. She’s standing by the door, the span of her back a shield before the window so that Mark can’t see inside. “Have you told your partner, yet?”

The pause is long—undeniably deliberate, a silent denial—and Mark feels himself growing cold, fraught with tension that feels like fear. He _knows_ now that this is a conversation that he shouldn’t be listening to. But his feet are rooted in place—he can no sooner move than he can make a noise, and it’s as though there are anvils tied to his ankles, cloth stuffed in his mouth.

“I don’t know how,” he hears Donghyuck say, voice thin and tremulous. “I…” he cuts himself off, abruptly. And when he next speaks, the words are far too quiet for Mark to make out.

His grip around the cans of coffee is tenuous—he’s hyperaware of the sensation of condensation collecting into cool droplets, snaking down in trails along his wrists, onto the floor.

 _Just fucking knock_ , he tells himself, and it sounds like screaming inside his head. His hands aren’t obeying him. He hears Donghyuck again, then.

“Please,” he says, and Mark doesn’t think he’s ever heard Donghyuck so flayed apart, voice scraping raw and thick out of him. Barbed wire; shredding of vulnerable flesh. “Please tell him, I don’t know _how_.”

It’s at this point that the guilt of eavesdropping becomes too much to bear, more than the fear that’s quickly making itself known in the hollow of his throat, pulsing in tandem with his racing heart. Nausea is an immediate thing, and Mark affects a disinterested calm as he retreats down the hallway, then turns back on his heel to make as much noise as he feasibly can—a warning for his return.

The voices have gone silent by the time he reaches the door, but he knocks all the same.

“Come in,” he hears Donghyuck’s voice, unbelievably steady, as if he hadn’t just been on the edge of what seemed like a minor meltdown moments before.

“Hey,” Mark says, cautiously, and then waves a can in the air. “Coffee’s here.”

“Hey, Mark,” Donghyuck’s smile is tired but sincere, and it may be Mark reading too much into things but Donghyuck’s eyes are pink around the edges, almost bloodshot. “You’re a lifesaver,” Donghyuck takes the can, and doesn’t kiss Mark because the doctor is watching, but he touches a finger to Mark’s wrist and rubs over the jut of bone. An affirmation, perhaps. A _thank you for being here._

“Excuse me,” the doctor says, and when Mark turns to her, she just looks tired. She’s fairly young, he observes—likely in her late thirties or early forties, and her dark hair is tied back in a somewhat disheveled ponytail. Pinned to the lapel of her lab coat is a name tag: Kim Soojin. “Would you come with me into the hall? There’s something the patient has requested we discuss.”

Mark blinks, glances down at Donghyuck, who’s staring resolutely down at his lap, fingers curled around the can of coffee like a lifeline. Mark looks back up—the doctor seems no less tired. She’s watching him, and although she looks mostly expectant, there’s a glint of something like wariness in her eyes.

“Yeah, um, sure, of course,” he says hurriedly, and then sets his own can of coffee atop the table by the bed as he follows Kim Soojin out into the hall.

She closes the door behind him, and Mark can’t help but feel anxiety tightening in his gut at being cut off from Donghyuck. Kim Soojin runs an exhausted hand down her face, but he watches as she squares her shoulders and straightens, before meeting him firmly in the eye.

“Mr. Lee,” she begins, “it’s somewhat difficult to address matters like this so directly, so would it be helpful for you to take a seat?”

Mark wants to shake her, wants to demand that she _get to the goddamn point,_ but he steels himself. “No, it’s alright,” he says, and his voice comes out clipped. He swallows, knows he shouldn’t lash out. Tries to soften it with a quiet, “and please call me Mark.”

She looks at him, and there’s something almost sorry about the quality of her gaze. He hates it. “Mark, do you know anything about Mr. Lee’s medical history?”

Mark’s brows furrow. “Donghyuck?”

“Yes.”

“I wouldn’t say so, no.” He narrows his eyes. “It’s not any of my business though, is it?”

“He requested that you be told about his… condition, as I’ve been told that you two are currently cohabitating.” Her voice is quiet but certain. “And it would be helpful for you to… understand the extent of things, so to speak.”

“Oh,” says Mark. Wonders why it is that Donghyuck’s allocated this conversation to the doctor, instead of telling Mark himself. The stone that sits heavy in the pit of his stomach fills his mouth with a sour taste, his earlier nausea not having receded at all. If anything, it’s only more palpable. His hands are cold with his nerves, and to combat it he stuffs them into his pockets, clenching them into fists.

Kim Soojin continues, seemingly unaware of his own inner turmoil. “In layman’s terms, Donghyuck has a degenerative neural disease. It mainly affects nerve cells—his neurons—which are what control voluntary muscle movement. What that means is that this degeneration affects his ability to produce movements such as walking, speaking, chewing, and so on and so forth. Earlier symptoms that usually crop up are fasciculations—otherwise known muscle twitching—muscle cramps, stiffness, or weakness. It may be something that you’ve noticed already.”

It feels as if the floor beneath his feet has turned into roiling liquid, and Mark can’t help but lean himself against the wall for support as he gapes at Kim Soojin. He feels _ill_ , feels like if she keeps talking, he’ll hurl all over her feet. “What does that mean?” His voice cracks then, goes hoarse, and for once in his life he’s utterly unembarrassed about it.

His head feels as though its filling with cotton, everything far away and muffled. Like he’s been treading water all this time and just now lost the ability to keep his head afloat. Swallowed by the undertow, the total loss of control. Fatigue stripping skin away.

People say that drowning is a painless death but what they don’t say is that the respite comes only after you’ve inhaled water—lungs full of fluid. Relief only when you’re as good as dead. Before that, though… agony. The most painful thing imaginable. Water tearing you open from the inside out.

When Mark was six years old, he nearly drowned. His mother had told him to stay close to the shore, to stay where she could see him. He was six years old and on top of the world, and so he thought he knew better. And for a glorious few minutes he did—alone in the stretch of the beautiful ocean blue around him. The gentle rock of the waves; the smell of salt and freedom. Miles on end. The shoreline a thin beige line, his mother a mere dot along the horizon. But the sea is full of traps, and when the undertow swept him under, he had been too worn out to tear his way out.

Mark doesn’t remember much about that day. Only the serenity of being surround by blue, and then terror. Bubbles, everywhere. Thrashing, soundless screams carried away into an ocean that had no mercy, that could not hear. Saltwater up his nose, in his eyes, the torment of suffocation. And above all else, the fear. Panic. Not knowing which way was up, the scrape of his palms and knees along corals and rocks. The floundering, terrifying certitude of his fast-approaching demise.

It was only luck that he survived. That the undertow was weak, so that he emerged, sputtering and heaving, meters away to the burning glare of the sun and the blue of the ocean that wasn’t beautiful anymore. And a lifeguard had spotted him then, dragged him back to the shore where he weathered his mother’s tearful scolding. Even as he spent twenty minutes vomiting salt water and bile into the sand, sobbing all the while. Torn up insides. Left with nothing but silt beneath his nails, scraped raw along his back and hands and feet. A phobia of the sea.

In this moment, underneath the cold fluorescent lights of the hospital, he recalls that day. He’s walking the precipice between the panic of suffocation and the inevitable end—yet ironic respite—that inhalation brings. He presses his lips together, stubborn. _Don’t breathe in. Don’t let the undertow drag you under._

Kim Soojin’s eyes are the picture of pity. “There’s no known cure,” she says, and her voice, even though she isn’t speaking loudly at all, is all of a sudden, a deafening blare. “Patients with the diagnosis eventually lose their ability to breathe. Life expectancy falls anywhere between three to ten years following the earliest onset of symptoms, depending on severity.”

“Are you telling me,” Mark’s own hands are shaking so badly that he can feel them knocking against his own stomach and hips. The cotton fluff feeling in his head swells like a phantom ache. It makes his ears ring. “Are you telling me that it’s…” he can’t say the word. _Terminal_.

Kim Soojin nods.

The floor drops beneath his feet—

_(“No, no, nonono;” low moaning sound of pain)_

lungs turned inside out—

salt rending throat—

—and Mark falls apart.

“I have to,” he gasps, retches a bit, blindly feeling for the door handle. “ _Donghyuck_.”

And Kim Soojin reaches for him, reflexively: “Maybe it’s better that you take a moment— _sir_ —please,” but Mark is already forcing the door open.

It slams against the wall, and if his eyes weren’t already swimming with tears—salt—he would see the way that Donghyuck startles, looks at him with an apology already written across his face. Mark staggers into the room, doesn’t notice the way Kim Soojin follows—harried and wide-eyed.

Donghyuck seems so utterly prepared, so strangely composed, and it’s _awful_ , that’s what it is, because Mark’s lungs are filling with water because Donghyuck is _dying_ and here he is staring at Mark with the same warm, guileless eyes and an expression that speaks of beaten-down acceptance.

Mark falls then, almost to his knees. But Donghyuck catches him, arms around his forearms. Pulls him to his side, touches his hand— _cold_ —to Mark’s cheek. He thinks he asks: _Is it true?_ He’s terrified. It can’t be. It _can’t_. Donghyuck’s answering nod, a subtle jerk of his chin. _It is._

“How long have you known?” Mark’s voice tears out of him then, a guttural, unrecognizable thing. “Donghyuck, _how long have you known_?”

The brush of Donghyuck’s hand through Mark’s hair—fleeting, agonizingly sweet. “Years,” says Donghyuck, with those melting eyes, that valentine’s mouth. “I’ve known for a long time.”

And the maelstrom of emotion that had burst out of him—panic manifest rage—dissolves as soon as it had hit, and Mark sinks, boneless, into Donghyuck. Suddenly he feels exhausted, a bone-deep fatigue settling as though every single one of his limbs is being weighed down by the bruising gravity of the Earth’s core. He barely hears Kim Soojin quietly saying that she’ll leave them some privacy, nor the subtle click of the door behind her.

“I’m sorry,” offers Donghyuck, after a drawn-out silence, in which Mark tries to get his breathing under control—unsuccessfully—heaving wet gasps into the crook of Donghyuck’s shoulder.

“For _what_?” And it’s as though everything has narrowed down to this pinprick point of focus, three simple words: _Donghyuck is dying_.

“For not telling you earlier,” Donghyuck says, and sighs. “But it’s like… how was I even supposed to start? I couldn’t imagine waking up one day and telling you, so, um, hey. I’m dying. It’s _absurd_.”

It _is_ absurd.

Mark pulls back, drags the back of his hand aggressively over his running nose, his eyes. It’s not fair of him, he thinks, to cry about _Donghyuck’s_ death to his face—like, the hell is he going on about, wailing like this? _He’s_ not the one who’s been condemned to a slow and miserable demise. Donghyuck having to comfort Mark about his own disease is cruel, Mark knows, but he’s always been so goddamned weak.

Donghyuck looks up at Mark, then, and that’s _pity_ in his eyes. “I’m sorry,” he says again. _For not telling you. For being so ill-fated._

“You…” Mark’s voice is thick even to his own ears. Wet sounding. “There’s nothing to be sorry _for_.”

And there really isn’t, but the truth of the matter is that the world is unfair, and Mark so desperately wants _somebody_ with an apology that matters, for there to be a solution to the biggest mess he’s ever come across.

Despite himself, he’s crying. Silently, with heaving gasps. The jerk of his diaphragm an ache in his chest.

“Don’t cry,” Donghyuck pleads, and cups Mark’s face to wipe ineffectively at his tears. “If you cry, _I’ll_ cry, and neither of us wants that.”

Donghyuck’s smile is wobbly as he meets Mark’s stare. Weakness fortified by blood and bones, by years lost to the oceans and hours between them.

“When did you find out?” Mark asks, and he must be a masochist, to ask such a question. The answer could only be a stake driven through the narrow slates of his ribs caving in.

There’s a drawn-out pause, a hesitance that Mark hates. “The end of my second year in America,” Donghyuck finally admits, and Mark stares at him in stupefied silence. _Four years ago_? 

Everything Mark has ever assumed knowledge of—everything that had been a presumed certainty—shatters. The world shifting. Rearranging its pieces around a new fact. He thinks about the months following their separation, the gradual descent of their friendship into darkness, into silence. Thinks of dwindling phone calls, ignored texts. Could he have been so self-centered to have missed this?

 _Had_ Donghyuck let go of him so easily, as Mark had done to him? He feels sick with the revelation, thinks about Donghyuck weathering the news unaccompanied. Thinks about how he hasn’t told his parents about being back in Seoul. Wonders what else it is that they don’t know. Donghyuck, keeper of secrets. A stronghold of a wellspring of the most terrifying thing. It’s horrifying, to imagine Donghyuck enduring it all alone.

How does one react to the knowledge of one’s death? An invisible timer now placed before his eyes. _This is your limit. These are your hours. Count down from ten._ Death is the one universal experience—but to be told: _here, this is your allotted time,_ must be a special kind of misery. Mark thinks about his own mortality, the uncertainty he’d taken for granted. To be hit by a bus the following morning could be a mercy, then, because at least he’d be too dead to fear it—but that’s just Mark. What about Donghyuck?

Mark looks at him, mouth running dry. He’s always thought that he knew Donghyuck, inside and out. As sure as anything. But this, here, is beyond anything he’s never imagined. How does Donghyuck wake up every morning and _smile_ , still, knowing that the way his days are numbered, that his end lies in the way his lungs will cave in, give up on him? You read about these tragic stories, see them online. You think, _oh, how sad_ , and then you move on, because you don’t expect that it’ll ever happen to you until it _does_ —and then it hits, like a hammer to the face, a knife to the spine.

“How?” Mark breathes, and doesn’t know what he’s asking, really. _How do you act as though your world isn’t in constant collapse?_

And Donghyuck smiles, then, impossibly. It’s wan, strained around the edges. He sits, ineffably still, shoulders hunched in on himself.

“All these years I’ve been running,” Donghyuck admits, gaze fixed firmly to his hands, which are fisted in his lap. An imperceptible tremor, white-knuckled. “Running away from home, from my responsibilities, from all my feelings. From everything that scared the shit out of me, which, uh,” he pauses, huffs a humorless laugh, “to be honest, _everything_ fucking terrifies me. I’ve made a living avoiding anything that could possibly hurt me.” His voice is but a whisper now, diminished. His cuticles; bitten raw and bloody. “But here’s the one thing that I could never outrun.”

Mark looks at Donghyuck then, his own eyes beginning to burn with the inevitable dryness that follow tears and finds that Donghyuck’s eyes are glossy and red-rimmed, even as he tries for another weak smile. Donghyuck sniffles, and it’s then that Mark finally notices how badly he’s shaking—how Donghyuck has _always_ been trembling in some sort of way in the past several weeks—perhaps even _months_ —and he hates himself, for being so self-centered, for being so blind to it all. How long had there been clues, smattering of hints throughout their lives? The tremor of Donghyuck’s hand as he tried to feed Mark, the crimson splatter of shrimp onto the kitchen floor. Donghyuck’s vehement reaction, one that Mark only now recognizes as _fear._

He doesn’t have the strength to tell Donghyuck not to cry. He watches, caught between acute misery and numbness, as Donghyuck lowers his head and bites down on his bottom lip.

Donghyuck smiles, wry. It’s humorless; doesn’t reach his eyes. “It was always going to be like this, anyways. I wasn’t made to last.” And there was that saying, wasn’t there; the flame that burns twice as bright burns half as long…?

The fact of the matter is this: Donghyuck has always been the brightest flame, the sort of inferno that sets the world ablaze. A fire like that leaves only destruction in its wake—charred blackened remnants of Mark’s still-beating heart—before petering out, the gentle echo of smoke, of ash. Mark doesn’t want it to be true—he won’t allow it, he won’t, he won’t, he _won’t_.

But he’s just one person, and not a savior.

“Please,” Donghyuck says and then looks up, and Mark has never heard Donghyuck beg so openly, so obviously frightened, “don’t say that this’ll change things between us. I’m still the same, Mark, _please_ , I’m still Donghyuck, I’m still _yours_ ,” and it dissolves, then, into unsteady gulping breaths, a quiet sound of hurt.

The thing about being a novelist—about spending every single one of his days trying to create stories through imagined words—is that sometimes there is no right way to quantify a feeling, an experience. Here, now, with his limp hands clasped in Donghyuck’s shaking grip, as he stares unblinkingly at the crown of Donghyuck’s bowed head, he thinks, _ah. So that’s how it is._ And there are no words. Nothing that can be said to make everything okay again.

The truth echoes: _he’s dying._

_And you’ll be all alone._

~

The ride back to the apartment is tense with an oppressive sort of silence that has never existed between the two of them, and when Mark gets Donghyuck settled in the apartment he stands in the living room and looks at the worn brown piano pushed up against the wall and feels _suffocated._

“I’m going out,” he says to Donghyuck, gruffer than he intends to be. “For a walk.”

And Donghyuck blinks up at him with his sad doe eyes and nods. Heart bleeding out his eyes, his rosebud mouth. “Take all the time you need,” he says quietly, and it’s so tragic that Mark almost wants to laugh.

All the time he needs. What’s _that_ supposed to mean? A half hour walk isn’t going to be enough for him to screw his head back on straight, isn’t enough for him to walk back into the apartment to greet Donghyuck with a smile. He closes the door behind him and tries, deliberately, to not think about Donghyuck alone in the apartment, with his melancholic eyes and fractured ankle in a boot.

Mark’s wearing his jacket—except, he realizes with a strange sense of detachment, that it’s not at all very cold out. Winter melting into spring, season of life and renewal. _How ironic_ , he thinks, and kicks at a plastic bag lying on the sidewalk. Without realizing it, it’s been months. Donghyuck in his apartment at his side, winter into spring. And then what next? Into summer, then fall. How many more seasons do they have left?

He shrugs his jacket off, holds it in his arms. The air is crisp and cool, and despite himself he feels almost refreshed, and then is immediately guilty about it.

Mark has always been selfish. He isn’t sure if it’s a universal human thing—sometimes he thinks it is, but other times he suspects that he’s just a raging, self-centered asshole. Besides, who else’s head is he supposed to exist in outside his own? It’s all he’s ever known. Darkness behind closed lids. A silent voice of a million words. Honestly, who _isn’t_ at least a little bit intolerable to themselves?

On his eleventh birthday his mother had lost her temper at him. He doesn’t remember what it was exactly. It must have been something stupid, like him not wanting to talk to his grandmother on the phone on his birthday. Because he didn’t think that he was all that familiar with the woman to want to spend twenty minutes on the phone with her. She lived in Canada. He had only ever met her twice in his life. And maybe he had whined, a little, about having to speak to her on the phone.

But then his mother had started screaming at him. _You’re an egocentric, awful boy_ , he remembered her saying. _All you ever do is think about yourself._ And it had gone on for some time, he recalled. And they had been in public. At a restaurant, for brunch. He was a shy kid. He remembered feeling humiliated, and then when he had picked up the phone after his mother insisted on calling his grandmother back, he sat there in dead silence for the next half hour while she rambled at him, and then spent the rest of his birthday sulking and feeling sorry for himself. So terrible a scene for something as little as a half hour phone call.

This was the sort of selfish behavior that was typical of him. He thought to do nice things often, but rarely followed through. He remembered buying Donghyuck something for his birthday, and it wasn’t until years later that he realized that the reason he had never seen Donghyuck _use_ the present was because he’d inadvertently bought him something that _he_ wanted, not something Donghyuck wanted.

With enough time that was all Mark was sure about. He was self-centered. He didn’t like wasting time around others, although all he ever did was waste his own time. He spent a lot of time, really, feeling like some sort of martyr, although he ostensibly wasn’t. It was quite embarrassing. And frustrating. It was a real shame, a real waste of time, constantly feeling so goddamn sick of himself. 

Now, in a brisk walk towards the park, he thinks. _I can’t be like this anymore_. It’s only then that he recalls Donghyuck, at the hospital. An imploring: _Please don’t say this’ll change things between us_. And he suddenly feels terribly nauseous. He’s left Donghyuck alone, with no assurance that he’d stay by his side. God, did Donghyuck think he was going to _abandon_ him after finding out? He comes to a halt, suddenly overcome with the urge to smash his own face into the asphalt.

“Fucking _idiot_ ,” he says, vehemently, and a college girl looks appropriately frightened as she lowers her head and speeds away from him.

Later, as he’s making his third circuit around the park, he pronounces, “ _it’s not fucking about you_ ,” and gets a very dirty look aimed at him by a middle-aged woman who seems to contemplate throwing her piping hot coffee at him.

The walk is good, in clearing his head. He feels less as though the ground is collapsing beneath his feet, although every time he thinks about Donghyuck at all it feels as though something is ripping through his chest to grip at his beating heart. And not in a good way. He thinks about how he’s going to face Donghyuck later. Knows he isn’t at all capable of comfort.

The embarrassing thing is that Mark still feels that _he’s_ the one that needs comforting, and he doesn’t really have anyone to talk to about it aside from Donghyuck himself. And how’s Donghyuck supposed to rub Mark’s back and console him about his own illness? _I’m sorry I’m dying, that must suck for you…?_ It’s so ridiculous that he almost laughs, and then picks up a pebble to fling into the little pond at the center of the park. And really, Mark might be selfish—and maybe even a little dumb—but he isn’t cruel.

The pebble doesn’t skip, just hits the water with a little splash and then sinks without a trace. Even the ripples it leaves behind diminutive in nature, disappearing in moments.

Besides, Donghyuck had begged for things not to change. That had to be worth _something_ , right? He could put on a show. Act like he isn’t going to be confronted with the complete and utter unfairness of it all.

He starts to sweat by his fifth circuit around the park. It’s troublesome like that, this weather. Cool enough for a gentle stroll, but far too warm for anything more vigorous. And his walk certainly _has_ been vigorous, a half jog around the perimeter as his feet struggle to keep up with the racing of his thoughts. The sun’s starting to go down, and he feels, briefly, bad about leaving Donghyuck alone again. But he knows that he’ll only be bearable if he’s somewhat more levelheaded.

The urge to sob has mostly dissipated, although his eyes still burn with the dryness that comes from crying too much. He blinks hard, trying to ameliorate it somewhat. What would it mean, for things to remain the same?

Mark thinks back on the past few weeks and finds that he’s not entirely sure of what that entails. His and Donghyuck’s relationship has been easy, so far, for lack of a better descriptor. He’s not sure if that’s good or bad—his past relationships had always been a little difficult for him, and they usually ended either in a fight or with the second party in tears. Maybe it’s not a bad thing, for love to come so easily.

He thinks about the past few weeks. The way Donghyuck had leaned over him, when they were in bed, and it was too early to speak. Dawn softening all edges, painting everything in watery golds and pinks. The warm, fond look in Donghyuck’s eye as he’d drawn a hand through Mark’s hair. His shirt oversized and slipping, revealing tan skin and an errant collarbone. The way Donghyuck treated him delicately, like he was something to be cherished. And then the way Donghyuck had leaned down and kissed him, and Mark had loved him so fiercely in that moment that his throat ached with it.

Donghyuck, who’s loud and funny and brilliant, but who loves quietly—without fanfare—and with all his being. The boy who looked at Mark and thought, _this is the one who I want_ , and says it, often, and who laughs hard and unrestrained when Mark stutters an echoing sentiment. That this is something that Mark can _have_ now; surety in that he can curve himself around Donghyuck who sits on the edge of their bed, that he can press his mouth to the sun-kissed skin of Donghyuck’s naked shoulder—and that without fail, Donghyuck will turn his head and kiss Mark on the mouth again and again and again.

The deep-seated ache of yearning, new memories folding themselves into a long, winding history. Too much of a good thing, perhaps, and karmic retribution its only answering call.

He clenches his hands into fists, grip on his coat a tenuous thing. White-knuckled fear; bloodless. Something terrible in him briefly imagines leaving Donghyuck—but the thought disappears, as soon as it comes. What good would it be, to abandon the one person he has spent all his life chasing after? The narrow span of Donghyuck’s shoulders, the view of his back, deceptively steadfast. The only familiar thing. And the thought of leaving him to his own devices is far more terrifying than the thought of having to witness his slow descent into darkness.

It’s getting harder to breathe, and Mark doesn’t know if it’s the pace of his walk or just the culmination of the day as a whole. It’s likely the latter, but he’s always been a liar—with none other than himself the perpetual victim. Mark’s never had a panic attack in his life, but he figures that now’s as good a time as any to have his first. But his body—ever-reliable and ever-his-friend—does what it’s supposed to do, lungs continuing their relentless pursuit of being, their unceasing contraction-expansion.

He steps closer to the little pond at the heart of the park. It’s stagnant, the dead sort of stillwater that’s the color of silt and ash, the air around it thick with the smell of rot. Moss has long since settled along its fringes. _It’s ugly_ , he thinks. He looks at the pond—with its slimy grey stones and the mosquitoes that skim its surface—and wonders, at length, what it would feel like to drown in its filth. Would it hurt the same? Silence and fear, after all, must exist similarly in all bodies of water. Drown in a bathtub or drown in a river or drown in the sea. It’s of no consequence, really. Because to drown is to drown is to drown, and death is the same everywhere.

Why do we fear death? Roman poet-philosopher Lucretius claimed that to be afraid of death is a useless endeavor, because prenatal nonexistence and postmortem nonexistence are mirror images. You don’t fear nonexistence before your birth—because you do not exist and therefore cannot experience, cannot feel—and so the same must hold true in death. _Death is not an evil._ However. As points out Thomas Nagel, there is a crucial asymmetry. Life between abysses. Good between two voids. We fear death because we have have been given something to lose. This is the deprivation account.

And Mark wishes, then, that he could be the one sick. Because to be the one that goes first between a matched pair is a mercy, a sort of clandestine compassion. At least then, it wouldn’t be necessary to learn how to be so terribly alone. And Mark has no lost love for the experience of being alive, of existing. He stands and stands and stands. Until his feet are sore, until his fingers are numb. He stares into the heart of this manmade pond and its body of grime, and perishes a thousand times in a million ways, except none of them are right and none of them hold. And then he emerges, the unwilling victor, untouched. _How wretched these things are: fate, fortune, and love_.

He doesn’t want Donghyuck to die.

It terrifies him more than anything else in the world.

~

Donghyuck is sitting on the floor of the living room when Mark returns to the apartment two hours later. It seems as though he’d tried to rebuild their fort from weeks ago but failed miserably. Pillows and blankets lie scattered around him, and his crutches are left in disarray by the doorway. He’s sitting with the coffee table pushed to the side, his legs spread awkwardly in front of him. His head rests on the seat of the couch, and all Mark can see is the long stretch of his neck, the subtle bob of his Adam’s apple as he swallows.

“Hi, Mark,” says Donghyuck, without moving. His eyes are trained on the ceiling light, which is switched off.

“Hey,” Mark says, a little awkwardly. “How are you? Um. Never mind. Stupid question.”

Donghyuck turns to him then, pressing his cheek to the couch cushion. His eyes form smiling crescents. “I’m alright.” He turns back to face the ceiling. “You don’t have to treat me like I’m made of glass, you know. I’m made up of tougher things than that.”

Mark stares at him, poisonous ache in his chest a serpentine thing trailing vines through his throat and ribs and guts. “I know.”

“If…” Donghyuck swallows convulsively. “If you don’t want to… don’t want to deal with me, I’ll understand.”

Mark looks at Donghyuck, sees him for all his wishes gone unsaid, all the tender hopes he holds behind his teeth. Donghyuck, who must be petrified, looking at Mark as though he's already forgiven him for a crime he has yet to commit. It feels like the breaking point, standing at the edge of a precipice. Mark looks down and sees nothing but the darkness, the sort of gloom that seeps into everything and tastes of soot and feels so, so cold.

"I'm not," he stops abruptly. "What made you think that I was going to _leave_?"

And it's then that Mark sees that the past several hours have taken their toll on Donghyuck too, with his red-rimmed eyes and bitten-raw mouth. He looks as though he's aged, now, eons beyond his meagre twenty-four years. Too much behind his lovely eyes, his soft face. Mark wonders: _is this what dying does to you?_

He wonders if Donghyuck's gentle allowance—his acceptance of the idea of being abandoned—is a natural thing. It can't be. If Mark were in his position he would never think to offer Donghyuck an easy out. There’s that age-old adage: if you love something, let it go, and if it comes back, it’s yours. Or something like that. But Mark’s never been one to tempt fate, never been one to risk losing it all even if it there was the possibility of gaining everything in return.

And maybe Mark's version of love has never been the right kind, because he can hardly even imagine relinquishing his hold on his one Good Thing, even if it was for his benefit. In the storybooks it goes, love is beautiful, love is good. Mark doesn’t think his kind of love is either of those things. He’s selfish, and hopelessly arrogant.

"It's just," Donghyuck stops abruptly, and then presses his knuckles to his eyes as though he has a migraine. He probably does. _Mark_ certainly does. "I know it's a lot to ask of you. Let's face it, I’m running out of time. I've already been deteriorating for god knows how long. I've been able to keep it under wraps so far. It isn't too severe yet—nothing I can’t handle. But... sometimes my hands shake so bad I can hardly button my coat. I know that things are beginning to get away from me. My hands'll go first. And then my legs. And then the words. And then the rest of me. My lungs, my heart."

To hear it from Donghyuck himself is the twist of the knife in a wound already open. Mark’s skin feels raw. Split apart and agonizing. He knows that it must be worse for Donghyuck, who's always been so independent. It would almost be funny, if it weren't the worst thing. The irony of Donghyuck's independence being taken away from him, when he's always prized his own ability above anything else in the world. Donghyuck, the strongest person Mark has ever met.

"I'm not leaving," Mark says, and finds that his voice comes out steady. Good.

And the truth is that he’s lived a life for nobody, existing in the breaths that he has never cared much about. Spent too many years caught in some twisted fatalistic fantasy. But he wants, now, to emerge from his solipsistic shell. To make Donghyuck happy, make him smile in that radiant, carefree way of his.

Happiness is so fragile a thing, really. Fleeting. The sticky-sweet drip of a popsicle melting in the sun. The unceasing buzz of cicadas, and the sweltering hold of summer nights spent lying in the grass staring at the stars. A kiss, slow and saccharine, under the covers in a cold, cold room. Even still, Mark imagines taking its incorporeal form with his two fists anyways, like lassoing the sun.

 _Here_ , he wants to say, stubborn. _Here is your little happiness, and here is mine._

"No?" Donghyuck murmurs, and he's looking at Mark with those melancholic mirror eyes.

“No,” Mark says firmly. “And no more secrets, okay?”

Donghyuck is silent, throat working. He’s watching Mark, wonderingly, as though he can’t believe that he’s real. _The feeling’s mutual, buddy_ , Mark thinks. Half delirious.

“No more secrets,” Donghyuck echoes, eventually. “You know my biggest one now, anyways.” His smile is wobbly but sincere.

Mark kneels down beside him then, and cups Donghyuck’s jaw in his hands. “I won’t let things change,” he tells him fiercely. “I might not be good for much, but... this. I can do this.” And maybe he’s trying to convince himself as much as he’s trying to convince Donghyuck. _Tell a lie_ _enough times and maybe it’ll come true_. Fake it until you make it.

Donghyuck’s grip is a vice around Mark’s wrist. He’s unblinking, eyes so very dark. He doesn’t say anything, only moves forward to kiss Mark, vehement and insistent. It's quick; a near bruising crush of his closed mouth against Mark's. The entire time, his eyes are wide open. And when he withdraws, his brow is furrowed like he can't quite puzzle something out.

"Not good for much?" Donghyuck repeats. Slowly. Rolling the syllables around his mouth like the taste of something foreign. "You're an idiot."

"Yeah."

Donghyuck smiles, then. Says: "I'm in love with you, you know." He looks exhausted, shadowed rings around his eyes. He lets go of Mark’s wrist to run his fingers through Mark’s hair instead, pushing his bangs away from his forehead. Mark is very, very still.

"Yeah." Mark doesn't quite get _why_ , but if Donghyuck feels for him what he feels for Donghyuck—in _any_ similar capacity—then... he understands the sentiment well enough.

It’s then that Donghyuck seems to come back to himself, turning to look at the mess he’s made of the living room. “I tried to remake the fort,” he says forlornly. “Turns out it isn’t a very easy thing to do when I’ve only got one working foot.”

Mark laughs, helpless. “I could remake it if you want.”

“Nah,” says Donghyuck, casual, careless as anything. “Actually, I kind of just want to sleep.”

“Aren’t you hungry?”

“Don’t have much of an appetite, really,” Donghyuck says, and closes his eyes. “You understand.”

Mark is quiet, then. He studies Donghyuck, all his lovely, aching curves and edges. Angles and arches. The only beautiful thing in the world. The straight bridge of his nose, the swell of his mouth. His jaw sharper than the softness of his face would imply. Ursa Minor etched into his skin—cheekbone, jaw, throat. He’s only twenty-four years old. Still barely anything more than a dumb kid. Grief surges, unbidden, in Mark’s throat.

Here’s the thing that people don’t ever seem to remember to explain—about knowing that someone you love is dying—is that the grief starts almost as soon as you find out. Once disbelief fades into horror, when shock dissolves into fear. The world doesn’t stop spinning, because it never does flinch at such commonplace tragedies as this one. But Mark swears that the sky is collapsing, with him the new bearer of Atlas’s burden.

He doesn’t stop to be grateful and think, _at least he’s here now, alive_. Destiny dictates: every waking moment becomes the same misery a million ways. The ticking of a clock already set to dusk.

It’s a poisonous thing, this grief of his. An all-consuming black sludge that takes root in the very depths of his soul, a slow but inexorable erosion from the inside out. Constricting vines around his lungs—thing of thorns, purveyor of festering lesions. Languorous annihilation. Every time he looks at Donghyuck, it’s the opening of a wound anew. He could spin it a million ways, but the simple truth is this: _it hurts_. It hurts like hell.

Beneath the skin, tender flesh. Beneath the flesh, his blood, his guts, his bones. His pulverized heart, gristle and fear. _Salt, here. Grind it in_.

Donghyuck had made him swear that nothing would change, and he had agreed to try. Looked into his eyes and told a lie that he’d wanted— _so badly—_ to be true. But Mark’s never been any real keeper of promises. He sees Donghyuck, but it’s wrong. It’s all _wrong_. He’s watching a dead man walking. He sees straight through him, already a thousand miles and an eternity away. He’s staring at the face of the sort of cataclysmic ruin that promises nothing but imminent heartbreak. Hurtling towards oblivion, already mourning what’s right in front of him.

He reaches out, then, to cradle the back of Donghyuck’s head in his hand. Desperate reassurance that Donghyuck is here, and that he’s real. Warm to the touch. “Let’s go to bed, then,” he suggests, and is thankful that Donghyuck doesn’t point out the wobble in his voice.

“I feel like we both need a shower,” Donghyuck says wryly.

This is true. Mark’s somewhat grimy, having been sweating all day from stress. “You can’t get your boot wet, though,” he says, the only thing he can think of to say.

“Mm,” Donghyuck hums, and he sounds so tired, already drifting off into somewhere Mark can’t reach. “Bath, then.”

Twenty minutes later, Donghyuck is in the tub, his ankle propped awkwardly on the ledge. Mark is sitting on the toilet seat watching him, and the tiny bathroom is filled with steam.

“You should join me,” Donghyuck offers, and a slow smile spreads across his face, his eyes already half-lidded with fatigue. “It could be sexy.”

“Couldn’t think of anything _less_ sexy than having to maneuver around your foot and the pint-sized tub, to be honest,” Mark retorts, but he can’t help but smile.

Still, Mark finds himself kneeling by the edge of the tub only moments later, helping Donghyuck shampoo his hair—because Donghyuck had asked, and because he’s so far gone it isn’t even funny. Donghyuck’s sprawl in the tub is languid, utterly relaxed as his eyes drift closed. The entire weight of his head rests in Mark’s hands. His neck and chest are flushed pink from the heat, his skin silken and hot to the touch. Mark very, very carefully does not think about the swaths of wet, naked skin.

“You could get in,” Donghyuck tries, again, when Mark slicks foaming fingers through his hair, scratching at the nape of his neck. He makes a quiet, pleased noise. “We could squeeze.”

“I’ll shower when you’re done,” Mark tells him, firmer this time. “Seriously, I don’t want to risk fucking up your boot or your other ankle.”

Donghyuck sulks, cheeks puffing out. “Fine,” he grumbles, and then dunks his head underwater to rinse the shampoo out. “Killjoy.”

~

When Mark emerges from the bathroom after his shower, he finds that Donghyuck’s already in bed, lying flat on his back, under the covers except for his boot.

“It’s weird,” says Donghyuck, thoughtfully, as Mark rifles through the closet for an old shirt.

“What’s weird?”

“You knowing.” Donghyuck flips over onto his stomach, pressing his face into the pillows. “I spent so long acting like it wasn’t… like it wasn’t a _thing_ , you know.”

Bitterness—guilt—drops heavy in Mark’s stomach. He doesn’t want to talk about it. “I didn’t notice,” he says, flatly. “I should have.”

Donghyuck pushes himself upwards at that, propping himself upright on his forearms. “Shut up,” he says, except he just sounds tired, not frustrated. “I’m still fully functional. It’s not _your_ fault you didn’t pick up on this.” And he holds his hand up, where even from across the room Mark can see its persistent tremor. The hand drops back onto the bed. Donghyuck follows, splayed face-down onto the bed.

Mark feels sick with the force of his realization. “The _piano_ ,” he starts, aghast, and abruptly cuts himself off when Donghyuck jerks upright to stare at him. His mouth is pressed into a thin line.

“Yeah,” he says, and Mark hears the shake in his voice this time around. “I didn’t come back from the States because Korea has some sort of special treatment or whatever. It’s just that I can’t…” he squeezes his eyes closed, his hair a pool beneath his head. “I can’t perform anymore. The… the songs that I play are too intricate for me to handle now.” And Mark can see the wry smile, half-hidden in the pillow. “It was a long time coming, anyways. I wasn’t supposed to stay in America for so long in the first place.”

Mark stares at him, stricken. “What do you mean you weren’t supposed to stay there for so long?”

“I was only supposed to stay for three years,” Donghyuck sighed. “You know, to build some connections, see what it was like officially.” He pauses, and his eyes come slowly open. “My life’s always been here, you know?”

“So why…?” Mark trails off, throat tightening. _Why didn’t you come back?_

“I found out alone,” Donghyuck continues, “and I couldn’t bring myself to break the news to my parents. But… treatment is expensive. And I wasn’t earning enough at first to be able to afford the medication. Of course, they were horrified when they found out. They insisted on me coming back to Korea. But… god, Mark, I was so fucking scared. I didn’t want to be treated like some sort of invalid—how do you look at your parents and have them look back at you knowing that you’re _dying_?” He swallows thickly. “So, I said: I’m staying in America, no matter what. You can help pay for my medication or you can not, but… I’m not going back.” 

“Then…”

“And somehow, they agreed. I stopped needing their financial support soon after that, and I… I hate to say it, but I started avoiding them. Started turning down their calls. They tried to send me money, but I’d return it to them, too. Then, in a blink of an eye… years passed.” Donghyuck smiles, a watery thing. “And one night I was practicing, and I could hardly get a single note right. The shaking gets worse with stress, you know. So, I went back to my apartment and laid in bed all night. I thought about what I wanted. What I was running from, why I was so scared. And I’d imagined dying alone at that point, really—it would have been easier on everyone that way, probably. But.”

He pauses to meet Mark’s horrified stare. In all the months that they’ve been cohabitating, Mark thinks that he’s finally just realizing why Donghyuck never much spoke about his time abroad. So much of his life must have revolved around the diagnosis, and it must be painful remembering his time away, then, if it’s so tainted by the memory of learning to live (ha, what irony) with the tireless ticking of a countdown. Donghyuck continues, not giving Mark much time to react:

“I didn’t want to be alone anymore,” he says, and it comes out in a whisper. It’s an admission that makes Mark’s chest physically ache. “And I thought about you, then. I thought, _I miss Mark_. _I want to see him_. It was easy, after that, to admit to myself that my days performing were near their end. So, I got on a plane and I told myself that I was going to see you, to say goodbye—or something along those lines—but then I got here, and you opened the door, and it was like we were kids all over again and I—” Donghyuck’s voice breaks. “I thought you might’ve known. But I spent a few days here, and it was clear that you didn’t. I guess my parents didn’t tell anybody.”

Mark sits, then, on the edge of the bed. Donghyuck reaches for him, curling his fingers into the hem of Mark’s shirt. His fingers are cold again, and it sends chills down Mark’s spine. “I’m sorry,” Mark offers. It’s a useless sentiment. They’re both well aware.

“For what?” Donghyuck snorts. “It’s not your fault. Nothing’s anyone’s fault, really. Just get in bed and sleep, Mark. We’ll be okay.”

 _We’ll be okay_. And it’s strange, realizing that for the first time in his life, he doesn’t think that he can believe Donghyuck.

When he gets in bed and switches the light off, he thinks that he won’t be able to fall asleep. It’s odd—Donghyuck drops off almost immediately, breaths steady and slow. His hand is still on Mark’s hip, a comforting weight even as Mark stares unblinkingly up at the ceiling.

It feels like hours that he lies prone, going over the events of the day in his head. Every time he blinks, he sees Doctor Kim Soojin and her apologetic face, so full of a pity he never asked for. Somehow, though, even despite the fact that he’s sure that sleep is beyond him, the events of the day catch up to him eventually and weigh his limbs down with exhaustion like sacks of sand. His eyes close, and darkness overcomes.

When his eyes open again, there’s a part of him that’s well aware that he’s dreaming. Mark’s always been able to differentiate dream from reality, although he isn’t a lucid dreamer by any means. Always, always, nothing in his control. 

In the dream, he’s alone, at what appears to be a beach. It’s dark—not even the faint glow of the moon or stars to illuminate his surroundings. He looks up. The sky is a roiling expanse of grey clouds, so dark they’re almost black. Nothing is visible beyond them—the moon swallowed; the stars veiled. The sea in front of him is an endless stretch of Stygian ink, the sound of crashing waves muted despite the boom of their bodies against the sand, against the rocks. It’s cold, in an objective way, but it slips through him unnoticed. He doesn’t feel fully present, like he’s only some paltry imitation of himself, some half-formed impression of the real Mark Lee. It’s almost surprising that when he looks at his hands, they aren’t translucent.

He’s at an island, Mark thinks, vaguely. He can’t see much of it, but this he’s sure of. He’s standing alone at a tiny island in the middle of the sea. He’s barefooted, feet partially buried in cold, damp sand. Wind whips through his hair, but once again it doesn’t register properly—he’s merely a recollection of a person, carelessly pieced together.

All of a sudden, when he blinks, Donghyuck comes into existence. As if he’d always been there, and Mark just hadn’t noticed. He’s in front of Mark—in the distance—but he’s in the water, waves lapping at his knees. He’s dressed in pale colors. A loose, flowing dress shirt tucked into slacks. He hasn’t rolled up his pant legs nor his sleeves, and they’re soaked in seawater, plastered to his skin. He’s facing away from Mark, looking off into the distance, into the shadowed infinitude before them. 

“Hyuck!” Mark calls, bringing his hands up to cup around his mouth. “ _Donghyuck!_ ”

But the wind carries the sound away, and it dissolves—unanswered and unheard—into nothingness. Donghyuck doesn’t turn. Only moves forward, wading deeper into the sea. The waves lap at his thighs now, and Mark watches as he sweeps a hand through the water.

There’s something terrible in the pit of his stomach that tells him that if he doesn’t stop Donghyuck, that Donghyuck’ll just keep walking forward into the surf until he’s gone, devoured by the swell of dark water.

“ _Donghyuck!”_ He tries again, but it’s a fruitless endeavor, Donghyuck continuing further into the sea. Mark moves, then, but finds that for some reason each step takes an eternity, as though the sand is sucking him in, pulling him back. Realization strikes that somehow the sand has overcome him, turned magically into quicksand, and he’s trapped, anchored to his spot along the shoreline. The sand swells even more, and he’s waist-deep in it.

Donghyuck is further, still, and the water is at his chest. He seems calm, moving steadily deeper and deeper, and Mark is struck with a violent desperation, fraught with terror.

He shrieks: “ _Donghyuck!”_ And it seems that this time the sound carries, but it’s too little, too late, all the same.

Donghyuck turns, and his expression is so _lost_ , eyes wide and scared as the water laps at his throat, his chin. “Mark,” he says, in his shocked little voice, clear as anything. Like the sway of windchimes amidst a storm, pinprick light hidden in folds of fog. But it’s not enough, and the ocean, ever-ravenous, surges to swallow him whole.

Donghyuck doesn’t flinch, even as the water rises, black and freezing, past his chin, his nose. Mark watches—helpless—as Donghyuck closes his eyes and _lets go_ , dissolving into seafoam, carried away into oblivion. 

And then the dream changes, like rippling water, one image into another.

He’s no longer at the beach. Instead, he’s… he’s at his childhood home. He’s on the lawn, and it’s in the middle of summer. The air is thick with an oppressive heat, near syrupy with its humidity. Already, the back of his shirt feels damp with sweat—no, that’s not it. Mark looks down. his entire lower body is coated in a thin film of sand, and he smells distinctly of the ocean, of salt and the wind. He’s barefoot still, and the grass beneath his feet is a strange persistent itch.

 _Is this a memory?_ He wonders, and tilts his head up, towards the sky. The sun is a yellow yolk hanging high in the sky, perfectly round. The air is still, and the sky is so, so blue. Not a cloud in sight.

It’s then that he hears the sound of laughter, voices. The sound of two boys. It’s him and Donghyuck, he realizes, startled, as he sees them emerge from just beyond the bend. But they look young, hardly old enough to be in school. He squints. Maybe six or seven, at most?

His younger self doesn’t seem to see him standing slack-jawed and dumb in the middle of the lawn, instead bidding the younger Donghyuck a cheerful goodbye and heading inside. But Donghyuck…

Little Donghyuck comes to a stop in front of Mark and scans him derisively from head to toe. His hands are on his hips, and he somehow manages to seem as though he’s looking down his nose at Mark, even though he hardly reaches his waist.

“You’re here,” Donghyuck says, in that snooty, high-pitched voice of his. “ _Why_?”

“I don’t know,” mumbles Mark, and it feels like vertigo, looking down into the familiar face of his best friend aged six. “Do _you_ know?”

“No,” says Donghyuck, and there’s another strange moment of dizziness when six-year-old Donghyuck seems to melt into twenty-four-year-old Donghyuck, who’s suddenly nose-to-nose with Mark. He’s shirtless, for some reason, and his skin is warm as he slings sun-browned arms around Mark’s shoulders.

“ _I_ know,” says twenty-four-year-old Donghyuck, and his voice is velvety, rich with barely restrained laughter like he’s privy to a joke Mark isn’t.

Reflexively, Mark settles his hands on Donghyuck’s hips, staring at him with wide-eyed wonder. “Then could you tell me?” He asks.

“Of course not,” laughs Donghyuck, stepping out of Mark’s grasp, except suddenly he’s fourteen-years-old and in a ratty pair of basketball shorts and a too-big band tee. He’s skinny and disheveled, all sharp angles and terrible posture, except for his face, which is round and babyish. Fourteen-year-old Donghyuck looks up at Mark with that familiar judging stare, and he looks almost frustrated. “You have to figure it out yourself.”

“I don’t know how, though,” Mark says, and fourteen-year-old Donghyuck doesn’t seem impressed, only cocking a hip and quirking a brow.

“That sounds like a _you_ problem,” he says, as snotty as always, although there’s something almost scared in the furrow in his brow. He looks up at Mark with those round eyes of his, only a few inches shorter than Mark.

And then he morphs again, into what must be Donghyuck aged eighteen, because he’s holding their graduation flowers and he’s looking at Mark with shining eyes. “You can’t be obsessed with me forever,” says Donghyuck, eighteen, and _this_ is a memory, because that’s exactly what Donghyuck had said to him the day of their graduation. “Think of what _you_ want, and the rest will inevitably follow.”

Six years ago, at nineteen, Mark had blustered: _I’m not obsessed with you, asshole_ , and then had attempted to tell himself that it was the truth. But this time, because Mark isn’t nineteen and terrified anymore—and perhaps because this is just a dream—he says, miserably: “But I want _you_.”

And it’s twenty-four-year-old Donghyuck again, this time in that lovely cream-colored sweater of his, and he’s in Mark’s arms, his hands steady as they cup Mark’s face. “Idiot,” he tells Mark, but his smile is fond and oh-so-very soft. “You already _have_ me.”

Then Mark comes awake in jagged pieces, to an empty bed—the imprint of Donghyuck already gone cold—and the spill of pale light from between the slated blinds. There’s the sound of Donghyuck in the kitchen, and Mark’s more confused than he’s ever been. He turns, then, and presses his face into Donghyuck’s pillow. Breathes in. It smells of cheap laundry detergent, and of strawberry.

~

Here is a story that Mark has never told a soul: When he was fourteen years old, he catalogued every possible way he could kill himself, and then rearranged them in order of least to most messy. At fifteen, he swallowed a handful of pills and eight mouthfuls of vodka and woke up to the droning beep of a Holter monitor and the weeping figure of his mother over his lap. The lining of his throat was raw and shredded, the gunmetal tang of blood and vomit still thick in his mouth.

He stared at the fluorescent lights of the ceiling, unblinking until his vision went patchy, unfeeling, wishing that he had succeeded, but knowing that he would not try again. Neither he nor his mother would ever tell anyone else; it would be their (not so) little secret. She was ashamed. Maybe he was, too, a little.

To this day, all that was known of September 20, 2013, was that Mark Lee had been bedridden by the flu.

On the drive home his mother asked: _why did you do it?_ as though she was mourning a betrayal, her fingers white knuckled around the steering wheel. What he said was: _I don’t know_ , except the truth was that he did know, and the reason was simple: because he’d wanted to, because he was tired of being alive.

Mark has spent half his life secretly wanting, waiting for nonexistence. Then there’s Donghyuck—vital sunlit creature—who’s never even entertained the same wretched fantasies. And isn’t it laughable, how Mark has spent so long craving it, wishing for it?

Donghyuck never wanted to die, but Mark did—and here they are. One of them dying, but not the right one. Comic tragedy. The funniest fucking thing in the world.

At first, it’s strange, suddenly having to learn to live with knowledge that had so thoroughly devastated the foundation of Mark’s very being. He _knows_ what awaits Donghyuck, what must await the two of them. All roads lead to Rome, after all. But there’s really nothing they can do, aside from carrying on. It wouldn’t do anyone any good to be overcome. Sorrow is worthless, and nothing comes of it. At least, that’s what Mark tells himself—although he isn’t very sure that it works. Really, he’d walked on eggshells, for the first few days following The Incident. But then Donghyuck had lost his temper and whacked Mark in the shin with a crutch.

“I’m not decrepit _yet_ , loser,” he’d snapped, while Mark was groaning in pain. And then Mark had somehow come to his senses, pulling back all the overspill of his liquid grief back into himself, until he was a fortress every bit as impenetrable as Donghyuck—which is to say, mostly unyielding, with a few leaks here and there. And they were okay—at least, sort of. Maybe. Mark’s working on it.

Before he knows it, six weeks have passed and Donghyuck’s ankle is healed, and they’re at the hospital again to get it off.

Donghyuck’s been jittery all day, fingers tapping a jagged rhythm on his thigh, on the table, on whatever surface is available to him. “The doctor’s gonna want to talk to you about the other thing,” Donghyuck finally manages, when they’re in the elevator, and Mark’s fingers are curled around Donghyuck’s bicep. The corners of his mouth drag downwards. “I don’t _want_ her to talk to you about the other thing.”

“It’s only so I can help,” Mark says, although he also feels faintly nauseous at the thought of having the technicalities rammed down his throat. “Besides, maybe she’ll say that there’s nothing she wants to discuss, and that all that’s gonna happen is that they’re going to cut off your cast and then send us on our merry way.”

“Ah, the wishful thinking… Stay positive, honeybunches.” Donghyuck’s drawl is as cutting as always, but he seems a little more relaxed, leaning into Mark’s side. “It’s not like there’s much to say,” he mutters then, under his breath. Mark doesn’t think Donghyuck means for him to hear it, especially not that spiteful, bitter edge to the words. So, he doesn’t respond, instead staring steadily at the elevator doors, which slide open on the second floor, where Kim Soojin’s office is.

Kim Soojin looks marginally less exhausted this time around, and when she greets them it’s with a small smile.

“Mr. Lee,” she says, to Donghyuck, and then again, to Mark.

“Mark is fine,” mumbles Mark as he helps Donghyuck take a seat on the bed.

“Are you excited to have the cast off?” Kim Soojin asks, as she examines Donghyuck’s ankle carefully.

“Incredibly so,” Donghyuck sighs, “my ankle’s been itching for _days_ , and that horrible little scratcher you suggested hasn’t helped at all.”

Kim Soojin chuckles at that, and before leaning back in her chair to announce that everything looks perfectly fine and that the cast can be removed right away. And the boot comes off without fanfare, although it isn’t Kim Soojin that does it but another doctor and two nurses. Instead, she draws Mark out into the hallway to hand him a manila folder.

“Resources,” she murmurs, and then pats his elbow in what must be an attempt at comfort. “Mr. Lee refused them last time, so I thought it might be better to pass them off onto you, now that you’ve had some time to, uh, digest. There’s information about the symptoms, the various medications, and what to do when things progress. Of course, he’ll be coming in for regular check-ups anyways, so don’t be too concerned with the procedural side of things. Donghyuck’s lucky to have you.”

“Oh, um. Thank you.”

“I know it’s difficult—in all senses it must be a huge emotional burden. So,” Kim Soojin continues, “I’ve left some resources for support on your end, as well. I do hope that you consider them.”

She leaves, then, to sort out some paperwork about Donghyuck’s ankle. Cotton-mouthed and still vaguely nauseous, Mark slips the manila file into his laptop bag without looking at its contents.

He doesn’t think to bring it up to Donghyuck on their way back, knowing that it’s not something Donghyuck would be particularly pleased to hear. Instead, they stop at McDonalds, because Donghyuck’s craving something greasy and terrible, and they end up talking about the novel Mark hasn’t been working on at all, and a show that Donghyuck wants to watch.

It isn’t until they get out of the cab back at the apartment that Donghyuck says, almost consideringly: “I should visit my parents.”

He’s deliberately not looking at Mark, instead studying the sleeves of his jacket. He’s overdressed, Mark thinks—it’s too warm out now for a jacket but Donghyuck seems fine as he is. “What brought this on?”

Donghyuck doesn’t respond in the long moments that it takes for them to take the elevator up to the fifth floor of the building, nor while Mark unlocks the front door. It isn’t until they’re both inside and the door is closed behind him that he says, in a very small voice: “I thought that maybe you could come with me.” 

Mark stills. He hasn’t seen the Lees in about as long as Donghyuck has, although on the rare occasions he goes home his mother still does like to tell him to check in with them. The last time he’d gone had been over a year ago, when he’d visited his father for his birthday. Mark’s parents had never been the kind to worry about him much and were fine with regular phone calls. Visits had never been a regular thing, not after he’d moved out during college.

“Would that help?” He asks, even though his own stomach tightens at the thought of facing Donghyuck’s parents all over again.

“I’d like it if you came,” Donghyuck says, almost meekly. It’s unlike him. “And, um. About us… being together…” he trails off, looking somewhat uncomfortable. “Would you mind not telling them?”

“I wouldn’t mind,” Mark says, slowly. His parents don’t know either—truthfully, the thought of telling them hadn’t even crossed his mind. “Is there a particular reason you don’t want them to know?”

“Because they’ll pressure you,” Donghyuck says quietly. “I don’t want things to change, really. And I don’t want my parents to make you feel… obligated to me, or anything like that. It’s different when we’re just friends, and not… something more.”

Mark thinks, _is it, really? Is it so different?_ He’s _already_ duty-bound, at least in his own head—there’s no way he’s leaving Donghyuck to fend for himself in any capacity. But he agrees anyways, because it really isn’t that big of a deal, and he wants Donghyuck to feel as secure as possible.

Eventually, Donghyuck decides to go to their house Saturday, before noon, because he knows that’s when they usually have their regular weekend brunch. But he pointedly doesn’t call ahead, and Mark thinks that maybe it’s because he’s scared. That if for some reason his parents _aren’t_ home, that he’ll take that as an excuse to avoid them and run with it. And it’s funny, because Mark’s never thought of Donghyuck as somebody who was so easily afraid, and so _often_ afraid—but then he recalls, words spoken in a trembling voice: _to be honest, everything fucking terrifies me._

It’s like that that Mark finds himself, on the following Saturday morning, standing before a familiar doorstep. Donghyuck is at his side, and he’s clutching Mark’s hand so tightly that it’s long since gone numb, skin pale and bloodless with the imprint of Donghyuck’s fingers. For someone who’s lost a fair amount of control over his hands, Mark thinks—somewhat morbidly—Donghyuck’s grip sure is painful enough.

“We aren’t going to stay long,” Donghyuck says to him anxiously, tense all over like he’s ready to bolt.

“Right,” agrees Mark. “A quick hello then an immediate goodbye?”

Donghyuck shoots him a caustic glare. “Oh, don’t be such a dick about it.”

“I’m _not_!” Mark says, followed by a disbelieving laugh. “Seriously, if that’s all you’re prepared for, I’m totally fine with coming up with an excuse on the fly to get us out of here, okay?”

Donghyuck visibly deflates. “Sorry. I’m just… a little stressed, I guess.”

He steels himself then, gently extricating himself from Mark’s grip so that he can step forward to ring the doorbell. His hand trembles so badly that it takes two tries for him to even hit the doorbell and watching him makes Mark’s throat ache with a phantom pain. The minute they find themselves waiting are a tense sixty or so seconds, and Donghyuck’s so high-strung that his shoulders are hunched enough to almost bracket his ears.

Mark touches the small of his back lightly. _I’m here_ , the touch says. And although Donghyuck doesn’t turn to look at him, he relaxes just a hint, and is standing normally when the door swings open.

It’s Mrs. Lee, and she has her face turned away from them as she concludes whatever it had been that she’d been saying to Donghyuck’s father. And when she spins around, she promptly goes ashen.

“Oh,” she says, faintly, and Mark thinks he sees her very nearly swoon before she catches herself on the doorframe. “ _Donghyuck_.” The syllables come out of her in a rush, more breath than sound.

“Hi, Ma,” Donghyuck grins lopsidedly. “Thought I’d swing by for a short visit.” And he reaches for Mark then, with his unsteady hand, fingers a vice around his bicep.

“Mark,” Mrs. Lee says eventually, finally seeming to notice that Donghyuck isn’t alone. “Oh, how lovely it is to see you again…” but her voice trails off, and he sees the way her gaze keeps darting towards Donghyuck, as though she can’t quite believe her eyes. He understands the feeling.

Somehow, in the far corners of his mind, he thinks, _she’s smaller than I remember_. Mrs. Lee had always occupied a similar space in his life as Donghyuck did—it’s always been clear where Donghyuck inherited most of his spitfire personality, his quick wit. She’d been the one who first insisted upon Donghyuck taking piano lessons. It was only luck of the draw that her unstoppable force had met Donghyuck’s equally inexorable passion for the instrument, otherwise Mark suspects that their childhoods would have taken a vastly different turn.

She was a strange mix of tiger mom and something gentler, in the way that she treated Donghyuck, her only son, like the most precious thing on Earth. It was through their mutual care for him that Mark felt he understood her best, and although back then all those years ago he didn’t quite get it, he thinks that standing now by Donghyuck’s side and staring at her cracked open disbelief—her longing—that this is the one footpath the two of them have worn deep with use.

In Mark’s head, she’s still larger than life—that voice, high like Donghyuck’s, and perhaps even fiercer. But she looks _small_ , he realizes. She hardly reaches his chin. And maybe the last time he’d seen her she was already like this except he hadn’t taken the time to look.

She’s small and her temples are greying and she’s the mirror image of Donghyuck but female, and Mark feels something bitter and hot and tight curl up into a ball in his chest. She’s middle-aged and still beautiful, lovely and age-worn, and grief and perhaps jealousy makes him think, _I’ll never get to see what Donghyuck looks like at her age_ , and he doesn’t expect the way the realization hurts, like a sledgehammer to the gut. Blunt force, pain indistinct and all over.

“Please, come in,” she says, and she’s trembling too, except Mark thinks that in her case it’s probably just the shock, the adrenaline.

He takes off his shoes at the entrance—and even though he’s seen her more recently than Donghyuck has, he hasn’t been inside the house since he was maybe twenty years old and still living at home. It looks largely unchanged, and he sees the way that Donghyuck takes it in, wide-eyed but restrained, like he’s straining to reign in all his spilled open guts.

“Your home is lovely, Mrs. Lee,” Mark says, and he sounds faraway even to his own ears. He’s never felt so out of place before, in a house he’d used to consider his second home. And Mrs. Lee blinks at him, like he’s said something strange—and perhaps he has.

“Dear,” she says, and her voice comes out smooth and lilting like it always has, like Donghyuck’s voice had been in Mark’s dreams. “We have visitors.”

And Mr. Lee emerges and sees them, and although he doesn’t react as obviously as his wife had, Mark sees the way his grip goes rigid around the handle of his mug, the way he blinks, and the way his eyes are wet around the edges when they come open.

“Donghyuck,” he says, and Donghyuck smiles, a wobbly thing.

“Hi,” he says, quietly, and then is abruptly swept into a hug by Mrs. Lee. And the three of them stand there, locked in some sort of frantic embrace, and Mark looks away and pretends he doesn’t hear the sound of sniffling, pretends he doesn’t see the way Mrs. Lee’s shoulders are shaking, nor the way Donghyuck has his hands fisted desperately in his father’s shirt.

But the Lee family has always been tough, and it’s not ten minutes later that Mark finds himself sitting knee-to-knee with Donghyuck on the couch, with his own mug of tea held awkwardly in his hands. Mrs. Lee asks if they’re going to visit Mark’s parents, to which they say they’re not. Mark’s parents are likely at work, anyways, Mark thinks. They’ve always been busy, even on the weekends.

And although Donghyuck had told Mark that he didn’t want to stay long, the spend two hours there, and Donghyuck doesn’t seem to want to leave at all.

“I’ll clean the cups,” Mrs. Lee says, eventually, leaving Donghyuck to ramble on at his dad. Mark reflexively rises to join her.

Usually she’d wave him off, but this time she looks at him consideringly, and almost waits for him to stand up so that they can walk to the kitchen together. She doesn’t speak until they’re standing hip-to-hip at the sink, with her washing, and him drying. It’s a familiar scene.

“Thank you, Mark,” it’s so quiet that he can hardly hear her over the tap.

“It’s no problem at all,” Mark says absentmindedly, as he dries the first cup. “Doing the dishes has always been relaxing to me.”

“I’m not talking about the dishes, Mark.” She turns to him, then, expression utterly serious. “I’m assuming you know about Donghyuck’s condition.” When she sees Mark startle, going red, she rolls her eyes. “I’m not a fool, you know. I know how stubborn my son can be. And knowing that… knowing that he isn’t insisting on weathering this alone—after he so pigheadedly refused mine and his father’s help—has been an incredible relief to me, as a mother.”

“Oh,” Mark says, because he doesn’t quite know what else to say. “I mean… it’s _Hyuck_ ,” he says, like it explains everything. Maybe it does.

She smiles at him, and he feels embarrassed and exposed by the knowing glint in her eye. “I suppose he is special, that boy of ours.”

 _That boy of ours_.

“He is,” Mark says, feeling faintly flushed. “Really, really special.”

They’re silent for several minutes after that, and it isn’t until Mark notices that Mrs. Lee has gone entirely still beside him that he turns to look at her. She’s standing there, head bowed, and she’s so _small—_ and isn’t it funny, that she isn’t the one sick, but Mark still feels that she’s so much frailer than Donghyuck has ever been? When she next speaks, she sounds exhausted. Old.

“I’m far from the perfect mother, Mark,” she tells him, in a reedy whisper. “I’m hardly even a _good_ one—no, listen to me, Mark—and I’ve failed Donghyuck time and time again. I spent his entire childhood, his adolescence, being so concerned with cultivating him into a beautiful worthwhile adult that I think I may have lost sight of who he was, who he _is_. And it’s why, when he said four years ago that he wasn’t going to be coming back home that I didn’t fight him on it. He’s always been so headstrong, you know. I suppose in that sense we’re similar. And it terrifies me, because I’m his mother and I can’t protect him from this,” and to Mark’s horror, he sees the way Mrs. Lee is tearing up, “and I had always thought that I would always be the person he comes to when he gets hurt, or is sad, or scared.”

“Mrs. Lee…” he doesn’t know what to say, but the sight of her quiet crying is breaking his heart to see the woman who had so strong a presence in his own childhood coming to pieces. The grief of a mother is a palpable thing, and although Mark doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to know it exactly, he thinks that he can understand her in the most important parts.

“But knowing that he has someone reliable to look out for him…” she sniffles, then, wiping away the excess water from her eyes. She dabs at her face delicately, with the edge of her sleeve. She pulls herself together before Mark’s very eyes—erasing evidence of her own overwhelming sorrow. “I’m glad,” she says, firmly. “And very thankful to you, Mark.”

She’s looking at him like he’s someone dependable now, like he isn’t every bit as scared shitless as she is—and he can’t stand her, a little, because isn’t she just _pawning off_ this emotional weight onto him? She’s essentially just passed Donghyuck to him, evidently, like some twisted giving away of the bride. A spiteful, selfish part of Mark wants her to have to see the way Donghyuck will deteriorate before Mark’s eyes. But he’s silent. The rational part of him has always been an icy claw around his throat, and he swallows thickly, then nods.

“I care about him,” he says—a vast understatement. When she smiles, it’s knowing. Omniscient.

It’s like that that he and Donghyuck bid them goodbye, all four of them pretending like the hurt of anticipatory grief isn’t a visceral thing.

Donghyuck is subdued on their return to the apartment, and it strikes Mark as quite depressing that it’s a state of being that he’s rapidly growing used to. Donghyuck is more thoughtful now than he was at eighteen. Slower to react. And it must be the culmination of all these years and the explicit knowledge of his own mortality, but sometimes Mark finds that he misses the version of Donghyuck that existed before the world had a chance to sink its talons into him.

“I didn’t expect how much I’d missed them,” Donghyuck says, in the cab. He’s looking out the window, watching the streets pass them by. Muted din of reality left untouched outside the quiet bubble of the car. Mark hums, to show that he’s listening. “Even still… I don’t think I’ll go back,” Donghyuck’s voice is steady. Heavy with the weight of all the implications of his decision.

“Why not?” Mark tries his best to keep his voice light, only vaguely curious.

“It’s kind of painful,” Donghyuck admits, but affects an air of forced nonchalance. “It makes me want something that I can’t have.”

Although he doesn’t say what the ‘something’ is, Mark thinks that he has an idea of what it could be. “Well, if you don’t want to then you don’t have to,” is all he says instead, mild. “What do you want for lunch?”

And from the way Donghyuck’s shoulders slump in relief, Mark can tell that Donghyuck’s rather thankful for the rather inelegant change in topic. They decide on soba.

~

It isn’t until several weeks later that Donghyuck admits that on the days he’d gone out prior, he’d oscillated between exploring Seoul, and going to physical therapy.

“It wasn’t all that helpful,” he says, “because my… deterioration is progressing slower than anyone expected.” He smiles, then, but it’s wan. “Not sure if that’s a good thing or not, but you know.” He holds up a hand and the tremor’s persistent—he’s past the days where it had been an occasional thing bolstered by stress. It makes Mark feel sick watching him, so he reaches out and takes Donghyuck’s hand in his, running his fingers over the protruding knuckles.

“It’s a good thing,” Mark tells him firmly—although he doesn’t know if that’s true at all.

Mark accompanies him to physical therapy sometimes, now that he knows, and so he grows familiar with the team who working with Donghyuck. Donghyuck’s right, really. There isn’t much that they do—aside from treating him for muscle soreness and practicing fine motor skills, which despite Donghyuck’s best efforts, only worsen with time. There aren’t many medications that they give Donghyuck, either. Only muscle relaxers, and pain killers for soreness.

Kim Soojin, who sometimes comes by to observe, informs Mark that it’s mostly to prepare Donghyuck for when he takes a turn for the worse. It makes Mark feel really, really horrible. He hates physical therapy objectively more than Donghyuck does, and even though it makes him feel like a giant piece of shit when Donghyuck seems to notice and tells him that it’s alright if he doesn’t come all that often, Mark doesn’t really try to fight him on it.

Mark would much rather stay in the confines of his apartment than watch Donghyuck struggle, and although the ideal partner would hypothetically be perfectly fine with all the hands-on support, Mark doesn’t think he’s capable of it. Donghyuck seems to understand, always much sweeter when he returns from PT, even though he’s almost always exhausted. He’ll drape himself over Mark’s shoulders and press lingering kisses to his cheek, his jaw, his throat. It’s embarrassing, that Mark still needs this little bit of comfort from Donghyuck, when it should be the other way around.

And maybe Mark will regret it, when he thinks back on this version of them that exists today. He’ll regret not being more reliable, not being more supportive. But now, he’s just scared, and drained, and Donghyuck seems to get it.

Mark is well-versed in the art of self-pity, and it isn’t until Donghyuck’s twenty-fifth birthday that he comes up with an idea that’ll hopefully get him out of this not-so-bizarre funk.

He wakes up before Donghyuck on the day—a rare event—and heads downstairs, where Jeno is waiting. Jeno seems vaguely put-out at being up and about so early in the morning, still yawning into his fist. It’s warm out, brief spring bleeding into summer, and Jeno’s dressed in shorts and a green t-shirt.

Surprisingly, Mark’s managed to maintain regular contact with Jeno—not really Jisung or Jaemin, but he’s working on it. He’s spoken to the other two a handful of times, although Donghyuck hadn’t really pushed for them to spend time together as a group again. But Mark _has_ been spending a fair amount of time with Jeno, who’s mild-mannered and doesn’t ask questions that Mark doesn’t want to answer.

“Here’s the keys,” Jeno says, and then yawns again. He drops a jangling keychain into Mark’s outstretched hand. “If you crash my car, you’re paying for all the damages.” He pauses, thoughtfully. “ _And_ all my groceries for the next month and a half.”

Mark huffs out breathless laughter. “Deal,” he says, and closes his fist around the cold metal. “Not gonna crash, though. I’m a _fantastic_ driver.”

“Right,” mutters Jeno, rather dubiously.

“Oh, wait! Before I forget…” Mark roots around in his pocket for a moment. “Here’s money for coffee, you know. For making you get up and come here so early.”

Jeno stares at Mark’s outstretched hand and the ten thousand won note in it, arching a brow. “Are you _tipping_ me?”

“Well,” says Mark, drawing out the syllable, “if you don’t _want_ it, then I guess I’ll just take it b—”

“Oh, what the hell. Gimme.” Jeno snatches it out of his hand, much to Mark’s amusement. “Well, have fun. Tell Donghyuck happy birthday for me.”

“Will do. Seriously, though. Thanks, Jeno.”

Jeno shifts awkwardly on the balls of his feet, a little unused to Mark’s earnest gratitude. “It’s whatever,” he says gruffly, and then shoves his hands deep into the recesses of his pockets. “See you around, man.”

Mark bids him goodbye, and in his hand the metal of the car keys has grown warm.

It had been a last-minute sort of decision, when Mark had once again found himself at a loss while staring unblinkingly at his laptop. He’d moved on from outlining his novel, but much to his—and Doyoung’s—despair, he’d suddenly discovered that writing was the most difficult thing on earth, and he’d gotten incredibly stuck. Donghyuck had then suggested a change of pace, and then stared blankly when Mark had asked for ideas.

It took a bit of planning ahead, which isn’t something Mark’s exactly good at, but he’d managed to book two nights at an Airbnb in Busan, by the beach. It’s meant to be a surprise, although Mark doesn’t think he’s done a very good job at being all that subtle about it, anxiously asking Donghyuck if he was _sure_ his schedule was clear for the next several days. Nonetheless, Donghyuck had only smiled at him, hopelessly endeared, and made a point not to push Mark for spoilers even though he ostensibly had a very good idea of what the surprise was.

Jeno had, in good faith, agreed to lend Mark his car for the trip. It really, honest to God, spoke of a sort of trust that Mark doesn’t quite feel he deserves, but nevertheless—he’s thankful.

When he gets back upstairs, it’s quiet. Donghyuck’s still asleep, which is somewhat surprising. He’s never been a heavy sleeper and tends to stir every time Mark gets up. Donghyuck’s sprawled out on the bed like a starfish, limbs far-flung, his head tucked beneath an arm. He looks good like this—his mouth lax and his face worn smooth with sleep—young, and unburdened.

He looks his age.

Mark sits at the edge of the bed and reaches out, cautiously, because Donghyuck is a little trigger-happy and has a tendency to hit whatever’s closest to him.

“Hyuck,” Mark murmurs, and runs a gentle hand through Donghyuck’s bangs. His skin is cool to the touch. For someone who Mark often likens to what it feels like to languor under the hot summer sun, Donghyuck’s always run cold. He has a tendency to cling, siphoning warmth from whoever’s closest. Usually Mark.

Donghyuck leans into the touch, making a quiet, irritated noise as his eyes come open, squinting. “It’s so _early_ ,” he complains, when he sees Mark, and his voice cracks. Still, he reaches up to curl his fingers around Mark’s wrists, holding him there.

“Happy birthday,” Mark says, and smiles. “You’re twenty-five, now.” 

“Ugh,” Donghyuck wrinkles his nose, and then flings himself forward to bury his face into Mark’s stomach. “How _awful_. Now I’m well on my way to becoming a hideous old man.”

Mark doesn’t say anything, because even if it’s a joke, the idea of Donghyuck aging—of growing old together with Mark—has become a pipe dream that he wants so badly that it sits like a stone behind his ribs. Mark swallows and finds that his mouth is dry.

“You can laugh, y’know,” Donghyuck drawls, and then rolls back, away from Mark. He runs a tired hand down his face. “Okay, okay, I’m up. I want pancakes for breakfast.”

“Alright, your majesty,” Mark manages, and somehow sounds amused.

Donghyuck smirks up at him. “I like that. You should keep calling me that.”

“Not a chance,” says Mark, and gets up. “Go shower, I’ll make you your dumb pancakes.”

“You can’t call my pancakes dumb! I’m the birthday boy. No insults on my special day.” Donghyuck says, and then pouts even into Mark’s kiss.

“Anything for the birthday boy,” Mark says, half-sardonically, half-sincere, and then kisses Donghyuck again, close-mouthed.

Breakfast is an easygoing affair, despite several severely undercooked pancakes (followed by no shortage of _burnt_ pancakes, because apparently Mark is incapable of finding a middle ground), and it isn’t until an hour later that Mark cautiously tells Donghyuck about the Airbnb he’s rented.

“Oh, goodie,” says Donghyuck, brightly. “I’ve been packed for _days_ now—you’re terrible at secrets, you know that?”

Roughly twenty minutes later, Donghyuck clambers excitedly into the passenger seat of Jeno’s car, talking a mile a minute. In the recent days Mark’s starting to hear that when Donghyuck talks too quickly his childhood lisp has been making a reappearance, in addition to some vague slurring at the end of the syllables. It’s hardly noticeable, but it makes Mark’s stomach lurch to hear it all the same.

“It’s a long drive,” Mark warns, as he starts the car. “And since it’s early you can sleep some more.”

“Absolutely not,” retorts Donghyuck. “Who’d keep your boring butt company, then?”

He ends up falling asleep thirty minutes into the drive, much to Mark’s quiet amusement.

It’s good, though, to have some time alone with his thoughts. Mark doesn’t necessarily appreciate his tendency to overthink things, but when he isn’t distracted by looming deadlines or by the near-suffocating silence of their bedroom late at night, the drive is a useful diversion, and keeps him from getting too caught up in his own anxieties.

Donghyuck hasn’t asked about why Mark decided on a beach town, and Mark isn’t quite sure what he’d answer if he _were_ to ask. The thing is, his aversion to the ocean is still a very real thing—it’s just that Donghyuck loves the sea, and Mark thinks, somehow, that if he were to face one of his biggest fears with the person who’s always made him feel braver than he actually is… maybe it’ll help. Still, the thought of willingly entering the water makes him physically nauseous, his throat and lungs already burning with a phantom panic, pain.

He thinks about his dream, the one where Donghyuck had turned into seafoam, and his fingers tighten around the steering wheel. It’s a silly, meaningless dream—but fears are so often irrational, and this one is no exception.

The simple truth of the matter is that Mark doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing. He has a vague idea that it can’t possibly just be him blundering his way through the world—but at times it’s incredibly lonely, to feel like the only adult in the world who’s so directionless, so childishly lost.

As a kid he’d imagined adulthood with a sort of detached wonder—always with the sense that it was an abstract event eons into the future—as though something fundamental would change the instant he crossed the threshold from adolescence into adulthood. Into the _real_ world. But then he’d turned twenty, then twenty-one, twenty-two, and so on and so forth, and with each passing year all that he became sure of was of his explicit uncertainty. Of the future, of himself, of anything that people claimed gave life _meaning._

Childhood had been marred by the strange anticipation of adulthood, an endless wait for something vital to change. But then he’d become an adult, and _nothing_ about the core of him had shifted, and so all he was left with was this strange sense of unfulfillment, like a train hurtling towards a destination that never existed in the first place. Zero acceleration, except he’d been thrown from one extreme end of the spectrum to the other—maximum speed to minimum—which is to say, the sudden cease of all movement entirely. No progress.

Adulthood, Mark thinks bitterly, is stagnation. Being an adult is no different than being a child, he feels, except for the crushing weight of responsibility, and the unspoken urging for him to become a real individual. Do people ever stop feeling so lost, or do they just _accept_ it? Like settling for instant ramen when you can’t afford a heartier meal—or when you’re just too _tired_ to cook.

He’s taking things day-by-day, but is it enough? Mark’s spent so much of his life caught within the throes of some sort of unnamable unhappiness, the kind that often led his mother to lose her temper, demanding, _what the hell are you so goddamned sad about_. And it’s always been like that, really. Even before the world made itself known as something callous and cruel, before his narrow existence expanded beyond the thin gulf between his and Donghyuck’s childhood bedrooms.

Mark’s always had _something_ wrong with him, he thinks. Something weak and shadowed in the far reaches of his mind. Something pathetic. Something broken.

He’s never been one to outwardly display negativity—and although he suspects that Donghyuck knows to some extent; he isn’t actually sure how aware Donghyuck is of how deep these strange wounds go. So many years together and Mark still can’t imagine Donghyuck peering into the tender, hurting parts of him.

Mark swallows convulsively and resolves to not think so much of himself when they reach the Airbnb. This trip isn’t for him in any capacity, really. What kind of piece of shit makes someone else’s birthday all about themselves? He’s glad, then, that Donghyuck is asleep for most of the drive so that he can hash this out alone, silently.

The weather is beautiful; the sky blue and endless, speckled with white clouds. The kind of weather that should only exist in movies. And when the sea finally comes into view it’s a stretch of azure, the light that reflects off it near blinding in its might. He cracks his window down and thinks that he can smell it. Salt in the air, a breeze. It’s the open window that seems to wake Donghyuck, and he brightens almost immediately, rolling his own window all the way down.

“It’s lovely,” he says, with round eyes, as though he’s never seen anything like it before. Even though they’re still stuck in Busan’s awful traffic, Donghyuck tilts his face to the sky, absorbing heat and sunshine as he’s wont to do. Donghyuck turns to Mark and beams then, all teeth. “Do you remember before our graduation when we went out for a drive and I spent all of it hanging out the window and screaming?”

“How could I forget?” And Mark sees, in his mind’s eye—as clear as anything—the image of Donghyuck at eighteen, carefree and every bit as arresting as he is now, hair blown back in the wind and eyes squeezed shut against it all.

“Let’s go on a drive tomorrow, somewhere without people,” Donghyuck says, loudly, to be heard over the roar of the street and the engine, “so we can give it another go.”

The Airbnb is about a ten-minute walk from the beach, and it’s bright and airy, a thing of glass and clean-cut lines. Donghyuck is visibly delighted, flinging himself onto the bed with a little high-pitched squeal that he swears didn’t come out of him. The wall that leads out onto the balcony is composed entirely of floor-to-ceiling windows, and the curtains are drawn wide open. They’re on the sixth floor, with a perfect view of the sea.

By now it’s just past noon, and they’re both hungry, which means that they don’t spend long admiring the Airbnb before they find themselves walking along the beach, on the boardwalk, searching for a restaurant to go to.

Donghyuck slots his fingers between Mark’s, glancing at him with an uncharacteristically shy smile. “Thanks, Mark,” he says, and Mark stares at him and kind of regrets not being born with a photographic memory.

“No problem,” he says, a half-beat too late, and sees Donghyuck biting back a grin. “Happy twenty-fifth.”

“I haven’t celebrated my birthday since I left Korea,” Donghyuck admits, swinging their hands between them. “So, this is nice.”

“Really? Why not?”

“It’s not that I didn’t have people to celebrate with,” Donghyuck says consideringly, “it’s just that I never really thought to tell them, and it didn’t seem all that important in the grand scheme of things. Besides, more often than not I spent my birthdays practicing until late, and then I’d be too tired to do much else beyond stopping by a bakery on my way back home to get a pastry or something.”

“Did you have friends?” Mark asks, and then is a little surprised at how he’d never thought to ask before now.

“Sure,” says Donghyuck, easily. “All people at the conservatory, though. Not really anybody else outside that circle. It’s quite difficult, don’t you know? Making friends in a foreign country when you can barely introduce yourself in the language.” He laughs a little, and Mark thinks it’s incredible how easily Donghyuck adapts to so many things, to be able to laugh in the face of loneliness.

Or is Mark just projecting, here? _He_ would be lonely—but was Donghyuck? He stares at their linked fingers and wants so much more than he already has. Wants to crawl into the deepest parts of Donghyuck, exist beneath his skin. Wants to forget where he starts, where Donghyuck begins. What is a secret, after all? Is it something consciously hidden? After all, there must be millions—if not an infinitude—of little pieces of Donghyuck that slip through the cracks, unbidden. He knows him by his habits, his voice, his touch. But Mark’s greedy, and he looks at Donghyuck and he wants and wants and wants.

There will be parts of Donghyuck that he’ll never know, and it terrifies him, to know that they’re both walking the line of borrowed time. He doesn’t have the years to unfold Donghyuck’s person, doesn’t have the luxury of letting time bleed them both into one another. He tightens his grip.

And maybe Donghyuck can sense his apprehension, because he squeezes back, and looks at Mark with eyes soft with something a little cold, a little grey.

Mark digs his nails into the fleshy part of his own palm, an attempt to shake himself out of his frankly depressing train of thought. It works, somewhat, because now he’s very much distracted by the crescent gouges dug into his skin, and they hurt much more than expected. He bites back a wince.

They end up at a little restaurant tucked into an alleyway and up a flight of stairs—it’s a ‘make your own tteokbokki’ place, and it’s fantastic.

Donghyuck’s getting a little restless around mealtimes now, Mark notes—and has seemed to abandon use of spoons for soup entirely, lest he splashes things everywhere. He just takes his entire bowl and tips it into his mouth, and even so, it’s a messier affair than it should be, despite the fact that it’s only noticeable because Mark’s looking for it. Before long, he’ll be shaking too badly to even do that. Mark carefully pushes the stack of tissues towards him, and Donghyuck smiles wanly as he uses it to mop up his mouth, then the table.

“That was good,” Donghyuck hums. “Now I’m craving something _sweet_.”

They find themselves sitting on one of the benches along the boardwalk, each with a rapidly melting ice-cream cone in hand. Donghyuck’s fingers had spasmed once when he’d reached out to take his from Mark, and the cone had been daintily crushed, cobwebbed with cracks. Nonetheless, he eats with gusto, legs crossed beneath him as he watches the sway of the surf.

“It’s been years since I’ve gone to the beach, you know,” Donghyuck says, and drags his tongue over the delicate jut of his wrist bone, where his ice-cream is dripping. “I forgot how nice it was.”

Mark hums noncommittally.

“You hate the beach, though, don’t you.” It’s not a question. Donghyuck is watching Mark out of the corner of his eye and he doesn’t seem accusatory so much as vaguely intrigued.

“Not the beach,” Mark pauses to finish off his cone. “It’s the ocean that I can’t stand.”

Donghyuck knows the story, knows about the day his best friend nearly drowned. Has heard it from his parents, who heard it from Mark’s. He’d asked Mark about it the day after it had happened, but Mark had clammed up and refused to speak about it entirely.

“What was it like, drowning?” Donghyuck isn’t looking at him anymore, instead facing towards the sea, which suddenly does not seem so beautiful anymore, and Mark feels the blood freeze to ice in his veins. Donghyuck looks almost wistful as he stares at nothing at all, and he’s given up on finishing his cone, it appears, nor does he seem to register that most of it has dissolved into a sticky mess trailing down his fingers, wrist, and forearm.

“Painful,” Mark whispers. “Terrifying.”

“I heard that it’s a peaceful way to go.”

Mark doesn’t want this conversation to continue. It makes him sick with the memory of his own brush with death, and he doesn’t quite understand the pensive look on Donghyuck’s face. “It isn’t,” he says, shortly. “Or, at least, I didn’t stay long enough for it to become… a serene experience.”

“What _did_ it feel like, then?”

“It hurt.” The words come out clipped. “It burned, and you could taste it, but all I remember was not being able to see, and not knowing which way was up. Then choking, when I emerged. And vomiting.”

At that, Donghyuck grimaces, as if drawn abruptly out of his musings. “Ugh. That sounds unpleasant.”

“Understatement of the year,” Mark snorts.

“Do you think we could go down to the water, though? Just… to dip our feet in.” Donghyuck glances at him hopefully.

It’s not an overall great idea to send either of them to the sea for a variety of reasons. For one, it’s clear that Donghyuck, had he ever been a proficient swimmer—which he’s never been—would not be able to safely swim in a pool, let alone the ocean. And Mark. So governed by terror… to the point of incompetency. But Mark has always softened in the face of Donghyuck, easily swept along into his countless whims.

“Obviously,” he says, and then hands Donghyuck a tissue to wipe ineffectively at the mess he’s caused. “Why else would we come to a beach town?”

And it’s lovely, really, the rest of their afternoon spent wandering, although it seems that the longer they spend on their feet the slower they have to walk, the more tired Donghyuck gets. Mark’s never been all that athletic, so surely his stamina shouldn’t be outpacing Donghyuck’s so easily? The implications of it all are… horrific. But it’s not really conducive to the good time they’re having, so he carefully hooks his arm through Donghyuck’s—in part to be closer to him, in part to offer him something steady to lean on.

Donghyuck himself doesn’t seem to notice, brightly pointing out things that he thinks he remembers from a visit to the town in middle school, during a school trip.

It’s really nice, getting to spend an entire day with him somewhere new, and Mark finds that he’s probably smiling like an idiot the whole time through. And maybe it’s like this that he can temporarily forget—because life doesn’t exactly stop once you’ve learned that your best friend is dying… and maybe with time (never enough) he’ll be able to see the reminders of Donghyuck’s deterioration as nothing more than a simple fact of life, something to be dealt with, not something to combat.

After all, people learn to live with severed limbs, and he isn’t the only one dealing with a… terminally ill loved one. But the thought of joining something like a support group is near laughable, because Mark can’t imagine sitting in a circle with similarly miserable people lamenting something that he still has with him.

He holds Donghyuck’s face in his hands and tilts his chin up to kiss him. He tastes of nothing in particular, something vaguely sweet. And then the day passes like that, and by the time sunset rolls around Donghyuck has dragged Mark down to the surf, where water meets land, and where there are hardly any people. Summers by the ocean are colder than in the city, and the sea breeze makes it so that Mark almost regrets not bringing out a cardigan.

Donghyuck either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care—despite the goosebumps Mark can see on his arms—shucking off his shoes to leave to the side, wading barefoot into the surf. And all of a sudden Mark sees him superimposed upon the Donghyuck of his unsettling dream, even though this Donghyuck isn’t in a flowing collared shirt but rather just a t-shirt, and he’s smiling, bright as anything. The hems of his jeans are already soaked through, but he only grins, and kicks up water and sand in Mark’s direct. Mark shakes his head to rid himself of the memory.

“Come in,” Donghyuck urges, and then places another well-aimed kick into the water, and Mark shouts as the entirety of his pants are soaked.

“Aw, c’mon, Hyuck,” he complains, but Donghyuck only laughs at him, beckoning him closer. And he finds that he doesn’t have time to think about almost drowning, about Donghyuck dissolving into seafoam, because now all he can see is Donghyuck beaming, and all he _can_ do is chase, helplessly, laughing through it all. And Donghyuck’s energy must have surged, because he’s just fine dodging Mark’s grip, splashing water at him and shrieking when Mark does the same.

He wears himself out soon enough, though, about ten minutes into it, when the sky has sunken into a what looks like an inferno, swathes of oranges and reds spanning across the deceptively calm waters. Donghyuck’s backlit in gold, and his hair is a ring of fire around his head. He’s staring at Mark, breathing deeply, flushed and damp with sweat. He’s stunning, the sort of beautiful that Mark has always noticed.

The sea breeze ruffles Donghyuck’s hair in place of Mark’s hand, and he looks surreal, just a little. Like he’s something that shouldn’t be touched. But then Donghyuck is smiling, stepping _towards_ Mark instead of away from him, melting into Mark’s automatic embrace. He’s warm and _present_ and lovely, and when he loops his arms around Mark’s neck, Mark can feel the thud of Donghyuck’s heartbeat through his shirt, where he’s pressed himself close.

“Thank you,” he says to Mark, and then leans forward as though he might kiss him. But he changes direction at the last second, his forehead coming to rest against Mark’s temple. His mouth is soft against Mark’s cheek, the lightest touch. In that instant, it feels like they’re the only two people left on Earth, standing at the very edge of the world. Caught amidst the embers of the dying sun, daylight dissolving to dusk, to night.

“Love you,” Mark whispers, defenseless. Donghyuck only hums, and cradles Mark’s face to his throat.

~

Long after the sun has set, Mark sits on the sand and watches as Donghyuck stands, ankle-deep, in the shallow push and pull of the waves. He has a few rocks that he’d gathered from their earlier romp on the beach, and he’s attempting to skip them into the water. He’s not very good at it, and the rocks disappear with a resounding splash without skipping at all. He doesn’t seem very frustrated, and just keeps finding rocks, and keeps throwing them into the sea.

Mark’s tired, and his clothes have dried uncomfortably to his skin, crusted with sand and salt. But it’s relaxing, if not a little cold. They’ve spoken a bit about everything—nothing of consequence, really, but it’s nice just to hear Donghyuck’s voice. Mark’s sitting just beyond where the water hits, and when he traces aimless shapes into the sand, it sifts easily between his fingers. He vacillates between watching his own hand and watching Donghyuck.

“You know,” When Donghyuck speaks, his back is to Mark, facing the surf. His voice is quiet, and Mark has to strain to hear him over the relentless rhythm of the sea. Donghyuck seems to have temporarily run out of stones to throw, and in his hand is a cracked little seashell, edges worn smooth with time. The gentle pulse of the waves lap over his bare feet, his hair windblown and wild. “When I was fifteen, I thought that we would be together forever.”

“What?”

“It was so simple back then,” Donghyuck murmurs. “When I was fifteen, there were only two certainties in my life. One: that I would do anything in my power to become a renowned pianist. And two: that I loved you, and that I wanted to impress you.”

“To… impress me?”

“Obviously,” Donghyuck says, and Mark can hear the smile in his voice. “It certainly did stroke my ego. You praised me constantly—it was probably why I was so conceited as a kid, but all I ever wanted was to see you smile at me in that way you do and tell me that I was the most talented person you had ever met. The most talented, the funniest, the kindest. I wanted to be the most impressive person in your life.”

“You were,” Mark says, with wide eyes. “Always.”

Donghyuck laughs, then. “Thanks for that vote of confidence, Mark. Really, I was _such_ a brat.”

“That I can’t deny,” Mark teases, and Donghyuck laughs again, louder.

“It wasn’t until our senior year that I started panicking. I’d received an offer from the conservatory—that you know—but what I never told you was that I almost didn’t go. Because I didn’t want to leave you.”

Mark blinks up at Donghyuck, at his deceptively relaxed posture. “Are you serious?”

“Yeah. I… I told my mom that I was reconsidering, and she nearly sent me to the States that very afternoon. She… she knew what I felt for you, I think. Or she suspected. She told me that it was idiotic to care so much about what someone else thought, especially when it was _my_ future that hung in the balance. And I know she was right. So… I left, and I missed you. I don’t regret it, you know. I’m glad I decided to go. I don’t think I would have learned how to exist as my own person otherwise.”

And Mark stares at him in wonder, because then this must mean that his strange dependence on Donghyuck _hadn’t_ been as one-sided as he’d presumed, and for Donghyuck to admit that Mark had as large a role in all his major life decisions is a rush of… he doesn’t know what. But it makes his heart race.

“Why didn’t you… why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because you would have told me to go,” Donghyuck says, and before Mark can inevitably follow up with a question, confused, he continues: “and I didn’t want to hear you tell me to leave. I knew that you would tell me to leave because you thought it was the best choice for me—and it _was_ , don’t get me wrong. But I loved you too much to hear you telling me to go away, all the same. I was scared, and I didn’t want for it to hurt any more than it needed to.”

“But… we grew apart,” Mark says, a little numbly. The question goes unasked: _if we cared for each other as much as we said we did; then why didn’t we make the effort?_

“We did,” Donghyuck hums, but sounds only pleasantly contemplative. “I don’t blame you for it, do you blame me?”

“No,” says Mark, aghast, although the bitter little voice that exists inside of him cries _, you left me, you forgot me._ He beats that voice back with a vicious stick. “I just… I always thought it was a consequence of growing up.”

Donghyuck turns then, to face him. His eyes are very, very bright. “There’s no use now, though, is there? In… in regretting it.”

“I guess not,” Mark says, and then gets an armful of Donghyuck for his troubles, who flings himself onto the sand and onto Mark.

“I’m still sorry, for what it’s worth,” Donghyuck announces earnestly, and then kisses Mark before he can get a word in edgewise. And Mark lets himself fall into it, feeling the dull roar of his thoughts quieten to the faintest of whispers. Like if drowning _were_ a beautiful, serene thing. He focuses on what’s before him, throws himself into absorbing all that he can, imagines melting into Donghyuck, and Donghyuck melting into him, in turn.

The cold tangle of Donghyuck’s fingers in his hair, the hard jut of Donghyuck’s bony knee at his hip. The hot slide of Donghyuck’s tongue along the seam of his lips, his teeth, the feel of his narrow hips beneath Mark’s hands. The smell of salt in the air, the sound of the waves. And the world refracts, blurs, comes back into sharp focus. He feels everything shaking apart, tapering into a pinhole point until all that’s left to exist in is this pocket in time, where it’s dark and lovely in equal measures, all at once.

He breathes, he feels, he _dissolves_.

Donghyuck, Donghyuck, _Donghyuck_.

He doesn’t want this moment to end.

~

Their little trip continues like that, a little picture-perfect snapshot caught within the frames of Mark’s favorite memories, like a dragonfly immortalized in amber.

On the last night Donghyuck seems afraid, almost, reluctant to let go of the world that doesn’t exist beyond the two of them and their little room by the sea. He clings to Mark in bed, and he’s cold all over, and he pretends that his hands aren’t shaking when he presses them to Mark’s jaw.

“I’ll miss this place,” Donghyuck murmurs, and then tucks his face into the crook of Mark’s shoulder. “And I’m glad you decided on a beach town, even if you still don’t like the ocean.”

Mark hums. “If you liked it then that’s good enough for me, Hyuck. Happy belated twenty-fifth.” He presses his nose to the crown of Donghyuck’s head, and although he doesn’t smell of his favorite strawberry shampoo but of the free sample left in the Airbnb, it’s a familiar sensation, nonetheless.

Donghyuck is very deliberately silent, and the hand he has resting on Mark’s hip tightens its grip almost imperceptibly, to the point where Mark suspects that it had been a muscle spasm. But the hold doesn’t relax, and Mark nearly shifts to get away from the near-painful pressure, thumb digging into hip.

All of a sudden, Donghyuck takes a trembling, almost gasping breath. His mouth rests heavy atop Mark’s collarbone, his exhale a burning rush.

“We’re different, you and I, Mark Lee,” Donghyuck says, at last, burying the syllables into Mark’s skin.

“Hm?” Mark’s curious, but he’s already so tired, drifting away on the fringes of sleep.

Donghyuck doesn’t seem to have the same issue, words tumbling end over end out of his mouth, and perhaps it’s exhaustion—or perhaps fear—that makes him stutter, that makes him slur. “You’ve always been the generous, giving sort, but I’m… not. I’ll take and take and take until you’ve got nothing left, until you’re this hollowed out empty husk of a person, you know?”

The tone of his voice is harried, almost frantic, and Mark takes a moment to force himself awake. He needs to be fully present to hear this. “I… I don’t follow.”

Donghyuck pauses, twists his fingers into the back of Mark’s shirt, and continues: “I don’t know how to explain myself properly,” and he’s _frustrated,_ perhaps not at Mark, but frustrated all the same. “The truth is this: I’m selfish, and I’ve loved you for as long as I can remember. I’ll love you today and tomorrow and even the years beyond that, and I don’t…” Donghyuck stops sharply, room for a shuddering breath. “I don’t think I could stop. Not now, not ever. I love you in the only way I know _how_ , Mark. And it’s not beautiful, not to me. It’s possessive. And it… it’s unfair to you. For me to want to monopolize you, especially—” he cuts himself off, abrupt. Unsaid: _Especially because I won’t survive long enough to deserve to possess every part of you._

And Mark, terrified to admit to his own failures, his own egocentric desires and all their ugly implications, thinks, _but I would let you break me apart and drain me of everything I am, of my useless, wanting soul, of my blood, my lungs, my bones._ As long as it means that Donghyuck’ll stay. As long as he’ll live.

(But Mark’s always been a dreamer, well-versed in the little certitudes of fantasy, of fictitious desire.)

He tightens his arms around Donghyuck’s lovely, frail angles, his hollow bird bones. All he wants to say, the agony that blooms in his veins, kept in the little box hidden behind his ribs. “I don’t care,” he says, his throat a mess of thorns, “be selfish, then. I’ll stay anyways.” _We’re not so different; I’m selfish, too._

The bruising fit of Donghyuck’s fingers against his hip; a reminder: _I’m here_.

“Do you think…” Donghyuck’s voice is so very quiet, ripple in the pooling minutes of silence, and Mark tries so very hard to pretend that he can’t hear the hitch in his breath. “Do you think I’ll make it to thirty? So that we might celebrate like this, again.”

Pain and pity make their presence known in Mark’s throat, his stomach, and he feels his heart _ache,_ a physical soreness that makes it difficult to breathe. Drowning, drowning, always drowning. “You will,” he says fervently, and wraps his arms around Donghyuck. “I’ll make sure of it.”

And again, another promise that isn’t his to make.

~

( _“Are you still scared?”_

 _“Terrified. But what else is new?”_ )

~

Summer swells to unbearable heats, and when August arrives, they celebrate Mark’s birthday alone—again—this time in the apartment over a little heart-shaped chocolate cake. Donghyuck tries to feed Mark but shakes so badly he smears half of it across Mark’s cheek, and all Mark can do is laugh helplessly. He takes hold of Donghyuck’s wrist and helps him deliver it to his mouth, and then makes a pleased sound around the fork. Donghyuck smiles at him then, crinkle-eyed, all teeth.

They return to their routine—Mark suffers over his manuscript and complains about it: loudly. Doyoung and Donghyuck each get an earful every other day, and with time Mark’s somewhat diminutive circle expands to encompass Jeno, Jisung, and Jaemin. Even beyond that, they meet several others—friends of friends, and Mark finds that he has never known so many people in his life. Although he and Donghyuck don’t meet with them often he thinks that it’s nice, to know kind people who might offer support should he ask for it.

The old brown piano sits, untouched, pushed up against the wall. And really, Donghyuck does seem to act like it doesn’t bother him so much—more so pretending that he doesn’t see it at all—but sometimes Mark thinks he catches him staring, with longing, or with dismay.

One afternoon while Donghyuck is at physical therapy, Mark finds himself sitting in front of that piano. He tries to recall any familiar melody and spends about twenty minutes pressing notes at random. He finds, surprisingly, that he’s _missed_ the sound, even though he lacks much of the necessary skill. He wonders if it would be worth the potential fallout if he were to ask Donghyuck to try and play.

It’s certainly worth considering.

Recently, Donghyuck’s been complaining about pain in his legs. Mark had been concerned but according to Donghyuck it’s normal—caused by muscle stiffness, mostly—and it isn’t really anything to be too worried about. But words are words are words, and Mark can’t help but feel the cold grip of terror every time he has to spend those precious few hours at night sitting on the backs of Donghyuck’s thighs, massaging the kinks out of his unyielding legs. And these nights were always hard, Donghyuck muffling curses into the pillow, emerging with eyes red-rimmed and cheeks flushed with discomfort.

Donghyuck’s hands shake but his legs don’t—but it’s a trade-off, because walking gets harder, as is expected. He hasn’t started limping yet, doesn’t need a cane, but when they go out, they walk so slowly it isn’t rare to hear the quiet but irritated huff of impatient commuters behind them. Donghyuck smiles throughout it all, and Mark can almost pretend that he hadn’t lain witness to the trembling murmur months ago: _do you think I’ll make it to thirty?_

Because Donghyuck is twenty-five now, and Mark twenty-six, and they have had years together long departed, and Mark knows—better than anyone—that whatever they have left will never be enough. Minutes hours days months a steady marching nightmare, caught within the monotonous dystopia of something parading itself as normalcy.

And Mark spends his days, still, sitting in front of his laptop staring at words that don’t look like words anymore, and he wonders why it is that he’s spending all this time agonizing over this story when the truth of the matter is that all the things he should care about suddenly fall away—seem inconsequential—in the face of Donghyuck and all his smiling pretenses?

“Have you told Jeno and the rest of them?” Mark asks, one morning, when Donghyuck is at the door and struggling to put on his shoes. He can hardly do that now, and although he lets Mark help him with his socks, he still refuses to let him near his shoes. In a fit of frustration two weeks ago he had thrown away all his shoes that had laces, and then he’d cried, alone, in the bathroom while Mark sat on the bed feeling like the shittiest boyfriend alive.

 _Worthless pride_ , Mark thinks a little bitterly, but stays silent because he understands. He doesn’t specify what it is—because there really only is _one_ thing to be hidden.

Donghyuck seems well aware of this, going still, shoulders tensing. “No,” he says, airily. “We haven’t seen them in a while.”

And Mark stares at him, feels his stomach drop to his feet. And it’s true, he thinks. Donghyuck had pushed him to interact with more people, reunite with old friends, but he’s never really insisted on meeting up with them, and instead seemed content to hear updates through Mark.

Mark stands in the living room helplessly as Donghyuck finishes putting on his shoes, and feels, abruptly, incredibly lonely.

It’s summer now, late August, the kind that sweltering and feels more like burnt orange than green, and Mark finds himself trying to work while on his miniscule balcony. It’s hot and the entire back of his shirt sticks to him, almost entirely soaked through with sweat. He doesn’t want to write—has been ignoring most of Doyoung’s irritated emails, although it hasn’t gotten to the point that Doyoung is calling him to harp about his inability to ever meet a deadline.

Dread settles heavy in his stomach, and Mark stares forlornly at his laptop. He _wants_ to write this story, but he’s never been the sort of person who deals well with stress or distraction, and his writing is often heavily influenced by his own mood. He doesn’t want this story to seem sad, but almost everything he’s written so far sounds forlorn and self-pitying, and reading it back to himself it feels… grey. Sapped of all color.

It’s mostly on a whim that he decides to go to Doyoung’s office. He doesn’t call ahead, but at the same time Doyoung doesn’t seem surprised to see him, only arching a perfectly groomed brow and crossing his arms over his chest.

“Nice to see you,” he drawls, “after you so graciously left me to deal with the publisher since you decided to _fall off the face of the planet.”_

“My bad,” Mark winces, and clutches his back closer to his stomach. “I… I should have said something.”

Doyoung sighs then and rubs the bridge of his nose with an elegant finger. He’s always so put-together—Mark can’t really imagine him outside of the office, looking comfortable in a pair of sweats and a hoodie. “It’s what I’ve come to expect with you artist types,” Doyoung says instead, and only sounds tired. “I really don’t mind if you can’t make your deadlines, Mark. I’d just like if you would _reach out_ to me, alright?”

He looks at Mark, brows furrowed. Takes in the way Mark’s standing with hunched shoulders, the way his face is thin and drawn.

“Sorry,” Mark mumbles, because no matter how old he gets whenever Doyoung expresses disappointment in him he feels like he’s all of six-years-old and microscopic.

“Well, you’re here now.” Doyoung fixes him with a flinty stare. “It’s lucky I don’t have any appointment now so we can chat. What can I do for you, Lee Mark?”

“I don’t think I can write the novel,” he says, words coming out in one stuttering rush. And he feels like he’s forgotten how to breathe, unable to meet Doyoung’s incredulous stare. His chest feels tight. His ribs are caving in. He doesn’t want to think about his job—the job that he’s honestly _lucky_ to have, and the one that he’s never really put any proper effort into. Mark’s gone through life like a specter, half-there and mostly air. Never fought for anything, really. Pulled average grades, didn’t pick up any worthwhile skills. Struggled like everyone else did but had the privilege of a roof over his head and this scam paper-thin career of his.

It should be _easy_. He should be thankful for all the flexibility Doyoung offers him, the fact that he can even keep himself afloat with two mediocre novels thrown out into the void. But he thinks about Donghyuck, thinks about the strange ordeal of being _alive_ , and doesn’t think he can really bring himself to care about the words he should be putting down on paper, and thinks that everything he might produce in this strange half-asleep mood of his would be entirely unworkable.

“Elaborate,” Doyoung doesn’t sound angry, not like the previous times Mark had panicked and insisted that he wouldn’t be able to write. Maybe he can tell that this time is different—that Mark isn’t just insecure about his skill (or lack thereof), but that it’s something else.

“There’s… I can’t really go into detail, it’s not my place to tell,” Mark says in a rush, and then sits down on the chair across from Doyoung, and places his hand on the desk, which is smooth and solid beneath his fingers. “But there’s something going on in my personal life, and it’s taking over every aspect of my day-to-day, really, and I don’t think I can balance the two—and like, something has to give, you know? I’ve been… rethinking my priorities. I’m not saying I’m never going to finish this novel it’s just that… this… this thing, you know, has really changed things for me, and I know I’m being terrible and vague, and it’s…” he trails off, frustrated, and fists a hand in his hair. If he pulls hard enough maybe the words will come, maybe things won’t feel so tangled, so awful.

Doyoung watches him, and his unwavering calm is both infuriating and reassuring. “I won’t pry,” he says, after a long moment of silence. “I can’t say that I’m happy about this, but… are you sure you’ll write this novel… someday?”

“Yes,” Mark nods, fervently. “It’s just that I don’t think I’m at a place in my life right now where I could be satisfied with anything I write. This… this thing, it’s… it’s really important to me. It has to do with someone very special to me, and—” he stops abruptly, and flushes. “It… yeah.”

What is it that he wants out of his life? Nothing, really. Mark has mostly come to terms with the fact that he’s never been very ambitious, that he doesn’t think he’ll ever make a great change in the ripple of time’s sea. He’s just… a person, ready to be lost to the tides, to sink into oblivion. He’ll have his time on earth and then it’ll run out, and that would be okay. But… his stomach aches, thinking about Donghyuck. Donghyuck has always been better than him—he was supposed to achieve things, he was supposed to be the lightning in a perfect storm.

But life doesn’t often work out the way one expects it to, and Mark thinks that if all they’re given are these precious few months together, he doesn’t want to think about anything other than Donghyuck. It might be stupid, the way he’s rearranging everything around one person, but the thing about being given so obvious a countdown is that the things he thought were important don’t seem to hold much relative weight anymore.

Mark’s always thought about death from a purely hypothetical solipsistic perspective. He spent so long imagining that he would be the one to choose to leave, that his life was worth nothing at all—after all, if it didn’t matter to him, then who else would care—that this sudden shift in perspective is jarring and upsetting. If he were any braver, if he weren’t such a coward, he sure he’d be dead ten times over. He’d be a bloody smear on a pavement, reduced to nothing more than bones ground to dust and misting crimson. Skull cracked open, grey matter nothing more than meat—a soul forced into nonexistence. That way, he wouldn’t have ever reconciled with Donghyuck, wouldn’t have ever known about Donghyuck’s sickness. It would have hurt so much less.

And maybe they would meet on the other side, when Donghyuck was gone and Mark wasn’t so sad all the damn time.

The weight of his own apathy has been a presence long persistent. Misery, indifference. Two sides of the same exhausting coin. Bogging him down, like wading through quicksand. Drowning, drowning, not water in his lungs but earth, grit, the taste of mildew and rot. Mark thinks about being a presence that Donghyuck _needs_ , the kind of support he’s never been able to really offer.

But so far, he’s doing okay, he thinks. He’s pretending well enough, and he thinks that even if Donghyuck knows that he’s faking it, he’s grateful for it all the same.

Mark thinks about being left behind, instead of being the one who leaves. It hurts more to be the one standing in the wake of exhaust pipes left behind, he thinks, and he’s stared so long—unblinking—at the shiny wood of Doyoung’s desk that his eyes burn and have started to water. Doyoung is silent, and Mark feels distinctly pathetic but relieved, because it doesn’t seem like Doyoung is going to fight him on this one.

Doyoung’s eyes are almost painfully gentle when Mark finally looks up. It can’t be pity in his gaze, because Mark hasn’t told him any of the details, but he must be able to see that Mark’s coming apart at the seams, unravelling skin, blood, guts, bones.

“Then perhaps this may be the last time we meet in a while,” Doyoung murmurs. “But my door is always open, no matter when it is that you choose to take on the project again. You know, we’ve known each other for how many years now? Four? Five? Even if I’m not your editor, I’m happy to be your friend. If you ever… if you ever need support, even if it has nothing to do with writing, I’m available.”

And it’s embarrassing, the way Mark’s throat tightens, the way he has to fight back the hot rush of tears. He blinks rapidly and is grateful that Doyoung doesn’t say anything about the way he’s clearly on the verge of sobbing.

“Yeah,” he says, thickly. “Thank you.”

Doyoung doesn’t say anything, only watches, eyes roving over Mark and the way he shoves his trembling hands into his pockets.

And when Mark walks out of his office, he feels as though a fraction of the weight he’s been carrying has dissipated, left him with only one burden left to bear. He stands on the sidewalk, and tilts his face up to the sky, at its heart the yellow-yolk sun. Feels heat sink into him. The push-and-pull of people on the streets, the din of life all around him.

He inhales—bones bending to make room for his lungs, for the bloom of something unknown behind his sternum—then exhales. In. Out. Again, again, again.

He walks, straight-backed, full tilt, into the fray.

~

They’re out for okonomiyaki, because Donghyuck’s been craving it. Summer bleeding into autumn, sliding into winter. Crush of burnt oranges and browns beneath their feet, the skeletal limbs of trees all around them. Donghyuck carries around an umbrella all the time now, even when it isn’t raining. He’d refused a cane, too stubborn to admit that his legs aren’t working as well as they had been even just months before—and then one day Mark had offered him an umbrella, murmured something about it looking like rain, and Donghyuck had leaned into it, holding that umbrella like a lifeline, because it wasn’t a cane—it _wasn’t_.

But that had been a time ago, maybe late October, and it’s almost December now. Almost an entire year since he’d showed up on Mark’s doorstep. Months later and he carries that umbrella everywhere. When it actually _does_ rain, Mark makes sure to carry a second umbrella, one that can fit the two of them under it. He says it’s because he wants to hold Donghyuck, but neither of them has ever been very good at fooling the other. Nevertheless, Donghyuck doesn’t say a word about it, and when they go out now, his umbrella is a permanent fixture.

It’s strange—Donghyuck’s shaking isn’t as bad as it had been, but the tremors have been overtaken by aggressive spasms instead. He’ll be fine one moment, but the next moment he’ll fling his arm out so hard he’ll smack right into Mark, and his fingers will seize endlessly, uncontrollably. And it _hurts_ when he happens to smack Mark, but Mark takes it always with a smile, and holds Donghyuck’s hand up to his mouth to kiss his knuckles, delicate shifting bones beneath skin.

And, like clockwork, he’ll say: “If you wanted to be romanced so badly why didn’t you say so?” And Donghyuck will laugh and slap him—gently this time, deliberate.

They end up squeezed hip-to-hip in a little booth. They’ve recently taken to sitting next to each other instead of face-to-face across, Mark in the aisle to block Donghyuck from prying eyes.

Donghyuck spills his food more often than not, and Mark considers getting him one of those self-stabilizing spoons, except he’s pretty sure that Donghyuck would throw it at him given the opportunity. Donghyuck doesn’t like that his hands are going, that his legs are, too. He smiles the same but laughs louder than he did before, and Mark just counts it as one more tick in a box within the list of all the things that are changing.

Mark wants desperately to hide them away from the rest of the world, except Donghyuck isn’t like him and has never been one to avoid the inevitable, even if it hurts.

The doctor visits amp up, and physical therapy stretches into long hours in which Donghyuck can’t come home on his own anymore because he needs Mark to keep him upright. He refuses the chair, even when offered. Mark thinks that he’s scared that if he accepts it, he’ll never stand again. His legs are stiff, dwindling things. Every step so very careful—so very agonizing. Mark gets good at giving massages, a skill that he wishes were _sexy_ but isn’t, and he gets even better at crying silently in the bathroom in the early hours of the morning. 

Donghyuck eats less these days, only makes a real effort to get food in when it’s just him and Mark alone at home. It shows in his cheeks, the painful cut of his jaw.

“I’m craving something sweet,” Donghyuck says, only three bites into his meal and done with it already. He smiles at Mark, and that, still, is steady, even though almost every word is slurred. There are strange gaps in the syllables that don’t belong ( _c-rav-ing_ ). He doesn’t try to enunciate around Mark, because Mark’s always been the best at understanding him.

“Oh yeah? What’re you feeling like?” Mark leans over to swipe some of Donghyuck’s leftovers. The food hasn’t even gone cold.

A considering pause. “Waffles,” he decides, with conviction. “With Nutella… and the fun little rainbow sprinkles.”

“Sounds good to me,” says Mark, and these days, even though smiling often feels like an ordeal, he thinks he’s growing used to the strain. Happiness tempered with dread.

Donghyuck leans into him as they leave the restaurant, a too-tight grip around Mark’s bicep. It’s comforting, even as Mark slows to an amble, as though he’s taking time to appreciate the good weather. Clear skies, cold.

Quietly, several feet away from them, the voice of a child: “ _Ma, why’s that man walking like that? It’s funny_ ,” and Mark very deliberately schools his expression into indifference. Donghyuck _has_ started to walk a little strangely, his weight centered around the outer edges of his feet instead of the bottoms—more of a hobble than a rhythmic gait—but when Mark looks at him from out the corner of his eye, Donghyuck is smiling, utterly undisturbed, as though he hadn’t heard a thing at all.

Mark curls his fingers around Donghyuck’s thin wrist. Brittle bird bones. Tangible: a real thing. _I’m never letting go,_ he thinks fiercely, and then feels his heart stutter when Donghyuck turns the full force of that brilliant grin onto Mark.

It’s enough. It has to be.

~

This is a fact: nights are harder than days. Without the touch of the sun the darkness is an oppressive force.

Mark’s arm has long since gone numb from the weight of Donghyuck’s head. He doesn’t mind. Presses his nose to Donghyuck’s hair, takes a shallow breath. He smells like cruddy strawberry shampoo, like skin. Donghyuck is drawing strange little figures along Mark’s chest, a barely-there touch.

“I miss the piano,” he says, and his face is pressed into Mark’s collarbone, the words a muffled wet heat against his shirt.

“We can try tomorrow,” Mark suggests, without much hope. He’s made the offer before, usually met with a casual, almost dismissive deflection. 

“Maybe,” says Donghyuck, unexpectedly. Maybe he shouldn’t be surprised anymore. Make the paradoxical attempt to get used to being surprised.

Donghyuck lifts his head up to press his lips to the corner of Mark’s mouth, and his hand is cool against the bare skin of Mark’s hip. He looks at Mark for one wordless moment, gaze heavy and unreadable. His hair falls into his eyes, dark at the roots, too long. He hasn’t had a haircut in a while, but Mark likes it like that all the same, the way the ends fall into his eyes, curl at the nape of his neck. He looks lovely like this, soft and still.

Looking at him, Mark’s chest is tight with all that he wants to say but is afraid to. He lifts a hand instead, cupping the back of Donghyuck’s head. He presses him back against his collarbone. Breathes him in. It’s another few minutes of comfortable silence, the slow in-and-out of Donghyuck’s breathing, Mark’s hand fitting comfortably against the divots of his ribs.

It’s when Donghyuck’s breathing has slowed—when Mark thinks that he’s asleep—that he actually speaks, voice delicate and all too quiet.

“The world has never been all that kind to me,” Donghyuck whispers, words pressed gentle to the cradle of Mark’s aching throat, “but then it gave me you, so maybe it’s good for something, after all.”

Fate is a strange and cruel mistress, and Mark knows this well. What else could it be, to have to see Donghyuck like this—a flickering flame giving out—than to be the one dying, in his place? To know that when the time comes, he’ll have to weather it alone, a solitary soul standing at the precipice of a collapsing star.

~

Winter into spring, again. Ice sinking into earth, another cycle. Each season is both too long and not enough, and Mark looks at Donghyuck and thinks that the grief has been sapped of its voracity, more of a dull ache than a sharp pain. Sometimes it doesn’t feel like grief, even—he’s more adaptable than he’d imagined, really. He looks at Donghyuck and it isn’t the illness that he sees first but _Donghyuck_ , unsteady hands and a slow, meandering drawl.

Music fills his apartment. Something must have shifted that night, for Donghyuck to suddenly feel like playing the piano again. It’s funny, because Mark hasn’t even attempted to write—not even for the sake of entertainment—but Donghyuck’s picked up the instrument as though he hadn’t left it in the first place.

The morning after that murmured conversation, when Mark came back to wakefulness in bits and pieces, and the apartment was filled with music. And from that day on, it was a daily occurrence. Easy as anything. As if he’d never stopped.

Donghyuck spends more hours in front of the piano than not. He’s nothing like the videos of his old recitals, where he’d been upright and perfect. His right hand is less steady than his left, and so rather than the recognizable high sway of a melody filling the room, what Mark hears most are the lower tones of accompaniment—chords, melodic support. His collection of tiny little rainbow pillboxes lines the top board: red-yellow-green-blue-purple-red-yellow-green-blue-pink.

He sits straight-backed, stiff, posture much better than it naturally is. Whenever Mark walks by, he tilts his face up, angling for a kiss.

Resting against the bench, its handle atop the highest C, is a walker, not an umbrella.

(Donghyuck has always been stubborn—but he’s never been stubborn to the point of pain, nor stupidity. He’s pragmatic—perhaps far more than Mark has ever been.)

And Mark doesn’t know how much pain he’s in, only that he’s speaking less, even though his smiles haven’t lessened, even though he still grins (all teeth) into kisses.

It must be painful, Mark thinks, but the thought is muted.

It’s evening, the lights are dim. Something quiet and hazy filters through the speakers, a lovely, crooning song, and Donghyuck asks for a dance. He sways to the melody, clinging as though he _wants_ to be near, fingers stroking the downy hairs at the nape of Mark’s neck. His weight settles heavily on Mark’s feet, because he can’t dance on his own, and he thought it would be fun if Mark did the leading.

Mark’s clumsy, inelegant. But he wraps his arms around Donghyuck’s waist and buries his nose into his throat and breathes—a reminder. _I’m here, and so are you._

Donghyuck hums, out-of-tune, and Mark hides his smile against warm skin.

He’s in love. He’s so in love.

Oh, how wonderful a sensation, how beautiful, how cruel.

~

Spring, full bloom into summer. Languorous heat, the sound of leaves rustling in the breeze, cicadas.

“Ma…rk,” Two syllables, a catch in his throat. Donghyuck’s long stopped looking frustrated at his stutter, even as he gets less comprehensible by the day. It doesn’t matter. Mark understands—he always will. He has to accompany him to physical therapy now, the only one who gets what Donghyuck’s saying on the first try. He doesn’t understand why the staff find it so difficult—it’s easy to get him, he sounds the same.

He’s deeply attuned to Donghyuck, preoccupied with the smiling curve of his soft mouth.

Romance isn’t exactly on the forefront of his mind—and so they’ve settled into a routine, one which perhaps reads more of a couple that’s had decades to grow into one another. They’ve gouged out grooves with a butcher knife, molded themselves to one another as best as they can. Divots that haven’t had the years to settle, haven’t had the chance to be worn smooth. And maybe they do fight, but Mark’s never been one for grudges, and he loves Donghyuck too much to ever let it get out of hand. And Donghyuck refuses to let either of them go to bed angry.

“You can hit me to get it out of your system if you want,” Donghyuck had suggested, on a whim, months ago, and Mark had burst into frustrated tears.

“I don’t want to hit you, you stupid asshole,” and Donghyuck had gone wide-eyed, panicked, and spent the next twenty minutes rubbing Mark’s back and telling him terrible jokes, up until he started laughing through the tears. And that was that. Mark doesn’t even remember what they’d been fighting about.

Anyhow, nowadays Donghyuck doesn’t have the energy to fight. He barely has the energy to speak.

Day by day, they slough on. Donghyuck’s birthday passes again, then Mark’s. They are twenty-six and twenty-seven.

Time does not hold still; it is a relentless, unfeeling thing.

~

Summer sinks to fall, green to burnished golds. Gold dissolves to brown, papery leaves drifting from their branches. Winter arrives without them noticing. They spend more time indoors than not.

It’s December when Donghyuck spends three nights at the hospital for the first time. It’s mostly for observation, one of the nurses tries to reassure Mark. That’s not exactly true. He’s deteriorating faster than he should, and when Mark looks at him, asleep in that awful hospital bed with its patronizing sheets with cartoon sunflower print, he knows that their time together has never been so limited, final vestiges of sand slipping through an hourglass.

Mark sits beside Donghyuck, eyes gritty with exhaustion, and runs his thumb along the ridges of Donghyuck’s knuckles. Donghyuck’s fine for now, he knows, but still—seeing Donghyuck asleep in a hospital bed is an image he can hardly stand. He looks smaller than usual, his tan washed out and almost grey beneath the fluorescent lights. It’s early, but Donghyuck’s been so tired recently, and has started drifting off in the middle of the day, short naps that leave him disoriented but soft and smiling.

Donghyuck’s sense of humor has shifted, no longer the biting wit that it had once been, instead something worn smooth, far more understated. It’s an interesting change, maybe, but Mark secretly thinks that he’s relieved that Donghyuck, at the very least, hasn’t yet given up on teasing him.

Mark watches him thoughtfully. Donghyuck is very still when asleep, and he realizes that he doesn’t often take the opportunity to just observe him when he’s like this, vulnerable and quiet. Still, he looks young. Open and unconcerned. Unchanged if not just a little thinner. He _looks_ healthy. He looks perfect. Mark swallows convulsively, and squeezes Donghyuck’s hand.

It’s nearing the end of visiting hours, but the nurses have grown used to Mark, through his near-constant presence at physical therapy and check-ups. They often don’t let him stay overnight, because they know he won’t sleep—but they do let him stay until midnight, and one of the older nurses has taken to gifting him baked goods to take home because she says he reminds her of her grandson. He _likes_ the people who work at the hospital. He just wishes he didn’t have to be here so often.

Sometimes when Donghyuck isn’t around, Mark resents him. It’s an ugly thought, to resent someone else for being sick. Mark has always hated being left behind. He’d much rather do the leaving. Poetic justice that he can’t, maybe. Of course, he could always just up and disappear. But Mark’s selfish—never cruel.

As time has passed, Mark doesn’t much want to kill himself, not in the way that he had as a teenager. It feels strange to think about it now—not exactly scary, just bizarre. Like something that had happened in a dream. But… maybe. Just maybe. It would be easier if he were dead. He looks at Donghyuck and thinks about not existing, about never finding out about his being sick. About never getting to cup Donghyuck’s face in his hands to lean in and kiss him. Thinks about never getting to do all these things and is nauseous with the fatigue of it all. Good things are only good in relativity—you don’t know happiness until you feel sadness, or at the very least you don’t _appreciate_ the sensation of being happy until you understand what it is to be sad.

Mark has always lived in the careful area between two extremes, but Donghyuck makes him feel those excesses, forces him to oscillate between the very edges of two terrifying boundaries. He hates him for it. He loves him for it. He loves him he loves him he loves him.

This first overnight hospital stay becomes the first of many.

~

Fall melts into winter, and the crush of leaves underfoot are lost to the refracting glare of snow.

Donghyuck insists on pulling Mark onto the balcony when the first snowflakes appear—nearly tips off the edge himself, because his coordination is near-nonexistent—and leans back with his mouth open and his tongue out to taste the snowflakes drifting, swirling in the breeze. Mark doesn’t copy him, only smiles and leans against the railing, resting his cheek against his palm. He watches Donghyuck, who is smiling, whose cheeks are flushed with cold.

“It’s… sn-owing,” he says, with effort, looking pleased and pretty.

“It’s beautiful,” Mark murmurs, and watches the way a snowflake lands atop Donghyuck’s lashes, dissolving into dew.

Donghyuck and Mark sit there in a companionable silence for far too long, until Mark’s sniffling and the tips of Donghyuck’s nose is crimson. Donghyuck reaches over and slides his frozen fingers between Mark’s, interlocking knuckles, skin to skin.

The sun is only the faintest warmth, and everything around them is white and gleaming. Winter is the season of calm, the anticipation of renewal.

Donghyuck’s home only for the weekend—he’s going back to the hospital for the rest of the week. Mark hates it, and then hates himself for the relief he feels when he realizes that he has time to rest, that perhaps he may even have time to write. It isn’t Donghyuck’s fault, that he’s become a full-time sort of job, but the two of them know that this thing of theirs—this beautiful, wonderous thing—only has so much left in it before it peters out. Flame to smoke to ash.

Later, they’re inside and tucked together on the couch. Donghyuck is drinking hot chocolate through a straw, but the muscles in his mouth are going slack fast enough that even that is a challenge. He’s sitting between Mark’s thighs, his back pressed to Mark’s chest. He feels solid and warm.

“I love you,” Donghyuck says, suddenly. He speaks slowly, deliberately. Does his best to form the words perfectly.

“I know,” Mark murmurs, and presses his lips to Donghyuck’s temple. “I know.”

Outside, the snow swirls faster. Descends into a storm.

~

When Mark realizes that spring’s arrived, he’s alone. Donghyuck is back at the hospital, this time for a week-long stay. So, Mark’s taking a walk, going for a coffee. It’s strange, the way the months have gone. First there was the adjustment, getting used to the noise in opposition to the silence. But now, with Donghyuck often away, Mark thinks that he has to get used to the quiet all over again.

Has to learn to exist in his own head without reprieve.

He ends up buying a secondhand turntable, collects vinyls of all the songs that he’s heard Donghyuck play, or has listened to. He feels a bit like a fraud, someone who says they like music because _everyone_ likes music. He doesn’t listen to the songs because he can appreciate their aesthetic value. He listens to them because they make him think of Donghyuck.

Each song, a separate snapshot of a memory he wishes he would never forget.

He doesn’t keep the songs on his phone. Only collects physical copies, the ones that he can find. Recently he’s been speaking to Jeno, who seems to understand Mark’s new fixation better than Mark himself does. He gifts him two records: one Billie Holiday collection, another Gershwin. Mark doesn’t know if Donghyuck’s told the others about his being sick. Mark sure hasn’t. But Jeno never asks, so Mark never has to work to avoid the conversation anyways.

Recently, he’s even been going to see Doyoung with surprising regularity. Maybe the break from writing was really all that he needed. Maybe he had just been using Donghyuck for an excuse to hide away from everything that _required_ anything of him. It’s strange, now that Donghyuck’s spending about half his time at the hospital, he’s really started pushing Mark to take his old hobbies and responsibilities back up—maybe because he pities Mark for being so emotionally reliant on him. Maybe it’s just because of Donghyuck’s influence, but Mark’s really thinking about starting back on the novel again.

Although, that’s not entirely correct. He _did_ need the break. Having taken months off has been more of a refresher than anything, in all honesty. But, in part, it’s probably because Donghyuck keeps jokingly begging for spoilers for the fantasy novel he keeps mentioning in passing. He doesn’t give any spoilers. Just tells Donghyuck that he’ll have to wait to read the final product. It’s a worthwhile incentive, if nothing else.

He sits alone in the living room floor with his laptop balanced precariously on his knees. The window is cracked open, the smell and sound of spring sweeping in through the gap. He puts a record on. Finds that he writes best when it’s classical but feels happiest when it’s jazz. Donghyuck has always been a classical concert pianist, but at home he prefers jazz. Rides the rhythms, feels the music in a way that Mark has never been able to. Even as his hands went, his voice carried the melody.

Mark calls Doyoung and they finalize the outline. Mark’s going to write. He’s writing, he really is.

Somehow, it feels like the start of something else entirely.

~

Donghyuck spends his twenty-seventh birthday at the hospital, but the next day he goes back home with Mark, so that they can have a proper celebration, just the two of them.

Mark had spent the previous night trying to bake a cake but had failed pretty miserably. He doesn’t have the heart to throw out the lopsided blue disaster, which is just as well, because Donghyuck positively lights up when he sees it.

“It’s terrible,” Mark says, and then laughs. It’s difficult getting Donghyuck’s wheelchair up the stairs to the door—Mark has to take Donghyuck up first, in a princess carry that makes Donghyuck go bright red, and then lug the wheelchair up afterwards. Mark thinks that maybe Donghyuck is embarrassed about the chair, except Donghyuck hasn’t said a word about it. But he likes being able to support Donghyuck, to feel the solid weight of him in his arms—reminder that he’s here, and that he’s real.

Mark puts on a record, and when Donghyuck notices that he’s pushed all of the living room furniture to the fringes of the room, leaving only a stack of pillows and blankets heaped at the center, he smiles so wide that it looks like it hurts.

“Fo-rt?” He demands, and then looks at Mark in that bossy way of his, the look that Mark knows means, _take me there right now_ , so he does.

Donghyuck settles against Mark on the floor, and they can’t sit here for long because it hurts Donghyuck’s back, but sometimes it’s worth it in order to relive these little childish indulgences.

They set like that, Mark feeding pieces of that ugly over-sweet blue cake to Donghyuck with his fingers. Donghyuck laughs at the taste, wrinkles his nose, and tilts his head back to rest it against Mark’s shoulder.

Mark tells him about the novel but doesn’t spoil anything. “I’ll dedicate to you,” he says, and laughs. “Because you’ve been so goddamned pushy about it.”

“As… you sh-ould,” says Donghyuck, and smiles smugly.

They end up watching a movie—some sort of sappy cartoon that Donghyuck insists bores him but always has him flushed and teary-eyed at the end of it anyways.

It’s a good evening. Donghyuck’s twenty-seventh birthday passes happily, simply.

When they go to bed together Mark gathers him in his arms and holds him tight. “Good night,” he whispers. “Happy birthday.”

 _Here’s to thirty_. It goes unsaid.

~

One afternoon, while they’re in the kitchen, Donghyuck tries so hard to tell Mark something that it nearly ends with the two of them in tears. Neither of them cries, but it’s a close call.

“Ma-rk,” Donghyuck grabs his hands, and he’s sitting in his wheelchair and Mark had just been about to get breakfast started. “I… I ha-ve to… tell you…” he looks at Mark with wide eyes, desperation and frustration making themselves known in equal measures. It’s been a while since he’d openly seemed annoyed at how slow his speech has become, so it instantly sets Mark on edge.

“What is it?” Mark asks, and then gently extricates his hands from Donghyuck’s so that he can run his fingers through Donghyuck’s hair.

“Wanted to… te-ll you… before… bef-ore I ca-n’t any… more…” he blinks rapidly, and then reaches out, fisting a hand into the hem of Mark’s shirt. His knuckles brush against bare skin, cold and electrifying.

Mark’s mouth goes dry. He can’t quite bring himself to swallow.

“I lo-ve… I love… you,” Donghyuck whispers, eyes round, suspiciously glossy. And then he says it again, again, again, in that halting, jagged way.

Mark leans down and swallows the rest.

~

It’s only months later that everything crashes and burns.

Donghyuck doesn’t make it to thirty.

He doesn’t even make it to twenty-eight.

~

All this time building up to the inevitable end and it’s _pneumonia_ that gets him—a freak cold that takes a turn for the worse. He’s too weak, been too sick for too long, and it demolishes him in one fell swoop.

Donghyuck’s had trouble breathing for a while already, and when December rolls around he’s hospital-bound, wheelchair bound. Mark goes to visit him more than the other way around. It’s around then that Donghyuck tells Mark to tell everyone—their friends, family, whoever else.

Mark resents him for that, a little. Leaving all the most painful emotional labor to him.

But he realizes, maybe Donghyuck tells him to do it for his own sake—he knows that Mark was never going to be able to deal with it on his own.

Mark has never wanted to see Donghyuck like this.

He sits next to him, thin and drawn and too small for such a clinical white room. He takes Donghyuck’s hand in his and presses his forehead to his knuckles.

“I…m so… tir…ed,” Donghyuck’s voice is a hanging thread, a rasping whisper. His hands shake terribly in Mark’s hold, brittle bird bones.

“I know you are, sweetheart,” Mark tells him, and his throat is closing too quickly, thick with tears that he can’t shed—not here, not now. “Don’t push yourself too hard, okay? _Please_.”

It’s long minutes of silence before Mark can bring himself to speak again, to say the words without choking on them. Maybe Donghyuck’s asleep. It would be easier, like that. He doesn’t want Donghyuck to see him so flayed open. He doesn’t… he doesn’t want this to be real.

“It’s not enough,” he whispers, and by now Donghyuck can only watch him, bright-eyed, miserable. “I didn’t get to… I didn’t get to love you well enough, Hyuck.”

And Donghyuck squeezes, then, shakes his head imperceptibly. “ _Enough_ ,” he murmurs, and then dissolves into wet-sounding coughs.

 _Enough_ , says Donghyuck. He’s so easy to love.

~

Mark thinks that he’ll dream of the smell and sound of the hospital for years to come.

Sterile, sharp.

The beeping of a million machines.

He holds Donghyuck’s hands and studies those beautiful, pianist’s fingers. They should have had years more of music to play. They _deserved_ decades more. Deserving and getting are two different things.

~

Mark calls Doyoung the next day to tell him he can’t come into the office for the foreseeable future. Maybe a few weeks. Maybe months. He sounds hollow enough, Doyoung doesn’t push him.

He stumbles back into the room and takes Donghyuck’s hand again.

Donghyuck is asleep, each inhale and exhale mechanical.

It doesn’t sound good.

The nurses look at him with pity, and one of the older ones rubs between his shoulder blades and wordlessly hands him tissue after tissue.

 _Poor boys,_ they whisper _, how tragic, how young_.

~

Mark wants so badly to be thirteen again, to get to stretch out on the grass on the lawn of his childhood home, to see the sky above him, and Donghyuck beside him.

Childhood was beautiful. He did not appreciate it enough, in the way that he should have.

What would thirteen-year-old Mark Lee say to him now?

He goes home to his lonely-empty-sad apartment and dreams of the days long gone, of those long winter evenings he and Donghyuck spent tucked together beneath blankets, staring at peeling glow-in-the-dark stars, of autumn afternoons walking home from school together.

In between his breaths, he lives all those happy seasons over and over again. Donghyuck, aged nine, with bruised knees and gap teeth. Donghyuck, aged fourteen, growing into himself, acne and a bad perm and a crooked smile. Donghyuck, aged twenty, one that Mark never knew but can imagine, alone and lovely and so terribly brave.

What he would give to turn back the clock, now that he knows all that he stands to lose.

~

It’s anticlimactic. Three weeks in intensive care. In the last week Donghyuck spends more time asleep than awake. Mark folds himself over his prone form and kisses his forehead, his nose, his cheeks. He’s careful not to let the feeling of his tears drip onto Donghyuck. Donghyuck doesn’t deserve to bear witness to his grief—not yet.

Others visit the hospital.

Mark barely remembers them at all.

He goes through the motions, doesn’t remember going home, or sleeping, or waking, or eating.

Maybe it’s all just a bad dream. A nightmare.

_When will he wake up?_

~

In the end, they come a full circle.

On the coldest day of the year, three years gone, Donghyuck takes a breath, and makes it his last. It was never a battle that he was supposed to win. It was never a battle at all.

(And it’s like this: when his lungs give out, they’re full of fluid. He suffocates. And they cannot save him _._ )

Mark stands at the precipice, takes a step forward. He falls. He does not drown.

Pity, that.

~

All the world’s sunshine suddenly sapped from Earth’s surface.

How has nobody else seemed to notice?

They make Mark leave the hospital.

~

Mark doesn’t remember how he got back to his apartment. He just knows that he does.

He opens the door and walks in. It’s cold, utterly still. Nothing has changed. Everything has. Somehow, he’d forgotten that he’d never fixed his heater. He feels its absence viscerally, now. When he gets to the living room, he has to close his eyes, feel his way towards his bedroom. He can’t look at the piano. Not now. _Maybe never_ , he thinks, bitterly.

The world is unfair. You love someone as hard as you’ve ever loved anything—more, even—and then just like that, they’re gone. Mark _knew_ that this was going to happen, so why does it _feel_ like this? Intellectual awareness is worlds apart from emotional preparedness, as it turns out.

He wishes he didn’t know what it was, to love someone to the point of despair.

One could always ask _why_ —but there is no why. It doesn’t matter. Maybe it never has.

Mark looks at Donghyuck’s toothbrush, orange, next to his. The little things, in this bathroom. Donghyuck’s toothbrush, his favorite towel, grey, next to Mark’s, blue. His fancy electric razor, his shitty kid’s shampoo. There’s still a smear of that shampoo, right near the drain.

Mark’s world is ending, collapsing into incorrigible ruin.

It’s just a toothbrush—

—Mark holds the heels of his palms to his eyes and applies pressure, hard as anything, and pretends that he can’t feel the hot rush of tears against his skin and _heaves_ —

—It was never just a toothbrush.

Each breath feels like a blade in his chest, knives in his throat. Gaping wound upon gaping wound. Loneliness a sweeping pain, a yawning chasm.

_Donghyuck never got to read his novel._

This was never a story with a picture-perfect ending. Love, loss, in equal measures. We navigate the world alone.

Mark thinks about beauty, about love, about survival. Was it worth it, in the end?

It’s so goddamned cold.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> jokes on me because what i thought was going to be a short little piece turned into somewhat of a monstrosity... well. it is what it is!
> 
> as always, comments/kudos are appreciated! [twt](https://twitter.com/epistolarymoon) and [cc](https://curiouscat.me/letterstothemoon)!


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